


The Hollow Heart

by DezoPenguin



Category: GrimGrimoire
Genre: F/F, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:10:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4243761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DezoPenguin/pseuds/DezoPenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a serial killer haunting the capital's theater district may be literally diabolic, it turns into a matter for Mage Consul Lillet Blan, especially when the killer proves to be stalking Amoretta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The City Theater. A rearing edifice of yellow stone that, when brushed by the sun, seemed to glow almost golden. Construction had begun during the first year of Her Majesty's reign, as the queen had wanted a testament to her support of the intellectual and artistic side of society. It was meant as a symbol that the glory of the kingdom was not merely military or economic, but cultural as well.

That lofty goal had not, perhaps, been achieved, but more often than not the theater was filled with patrons, from the highest of Court Society in their gilded boxes above, there to see and be seen as much as to be entertained, to the common folk of the capital who crowded the pit below. In the past the City Theater had been home to a variety of different performances: stage plays, musical performances, and so on. Upon occasion, it still was, when theater manager Brendan Saint decided that a special production needed a special setting (and his theater's bottom line a special infusion of cash or publicity), but for the most part it had served for the past fifteen years as home to the City Theater Opera Company. It had completely eclipsed the old Valentis Opera House-the best of Court Society, the wealthiest of the growing bourgeoisie, and the most discriminating of the commoners alike came to the City Theater first when the musical drama was their choice for an evening's entertainment.

Needless to say, Saint worked hard to maintain that prestige. He was ruthless, in conjunction with music director Marcelo Terne, in finding the finest talent within the kingdom's borders and making sure it was on his own stage. Like detectives, they kept their eyes and ears open for any hint of a breakthrough to make sure they reigned unchallenged. Three months ago, for example, they'd followed up on persistent rumors that the headliner at a Camden Lane music-hall featured operatic arias as well as the usual popular songs, and that she sung them even better than Maria Bacardi, the City Theater's diva. The rumors were correct, and despite La Bacardi's ardent displeasure, Saint had brought out Miss Amoretta Virgine's contract and she had immediately proven the wisdom of it by performing to rave reviews. Her talent was raw, but it was the extraordinary kind that would only add to the City Theater's luster as it developed. Unless, of course, someone better came along, but Saint somehow thought that was not likely to happen any time soon.

-X X X-

The Crow was late.

 _That's twice now,_ Pops thought tetchily. _Doesn't he like that new girl?_

That wasn't his real name, of course, but old Dominick Perignon never bothered with people's names in his own head. Just like the stage doorman was Pops to most of the people who worked with him, he found the countless characters who worked for and were involved with the opera company easier to keep straight if he gave them his own nicknames.

There was a sharp knock on the door. Pops opened the foot-square window to see who it was; no use letting in would-be lovers, jealous rivals, or the press...well, at least not without enough of a financial settlement to ease an old man's conscience in accordance with their nuisance value. It was just the Crow, though.

"Good evening, Pops," he said quietly and solemnly.

"Good evening, sir." Pops opened the door for him. No bribe here; the Crow was well-enough entitled to use the stage door. He swept off his cloak and handed it to Pops, revealing immaculate black evening-wear, with just a hint of gold embroidery in his waistcoat and a topaz pin glistening from the slightly yellowed lace of his cravat. "You're running late; they're almost ready to start the overture."

The Crow checked an old, silver-cased watch.

"So I am. My preparations took a bit more time than usual."

Ordinarily, Pops considered the Closing-Night Crow to be a normal enough fellow for his sort. He'd always made a big production out of any closing night, though. He'd dress up in his slightly worn finery-the same clothes as on the first closing night Pops had seen him six years ago, in fact-and would carry himself with an almost artificial, put-on dignity. Well, people had their quirks, and getting to see them was one of the pleasures of working at the theater.

"I was beginning to worry if you didn't like the Vir-I mean, Miss Virgine." _Must be getting old,_ Pops thought; _I almost called her The Virgin out loud._ The nickname came from the soprano's actual name, of course, and from her age-she didn't look a day over eighteen-but even more from her innocent manner. She never played games but simply spoke and acted truthfully in accordance with her own mind. It didn't strike Pops as naive, but as a kind of purity, not of the body (the Virgin had a lover and was no more coy about it than she was about anything else) but of the spirit.

"On the contrary," the Crow answered, either missing or just ignoring the slip, "I find her most enchanting."

-X X X-

Enchanting wasn't the word for it. The man Pops thought of as the Closing-Night Crow found himself positively mesmerized by Amoretta Virgine. There was something about the girl that drew him, pulled at him like a flower drew a bee. Oddly, it was not even her art that compelled him. Yes, her voice was beyond extraordinary, more than making up in an artistic sense for her raw, unpolished acting, but he was pulled by the same feelings whether or not she was on stage or off, her voice lifted in song or speech or fallen silent.

It was not love, the Crow knew. He would not call it that, nor even infatuation. There was a compulsion upon him, a lust that was harsh and fierce and by no means merely sexual. Amoretta's mere existence called out to dark places within him, sang to all his sins with a siren's call. He sat in his orchestra seat, watching with staring eyes, every muscle in his body drawn tight, it seemed, as if his tendons strained almost to the snapping point like the strings of a violin.

The familiar heat built within him, rising, swelling as the performance went on. He was glad to be seated among strangers, for by the first intermission he doubted that he could have engaged in even the most casual of conversations. By the time the curtain raised for the final act, sweat was trickling into his eyes, rolled down his back under his shirt, and he felt the now-familiar surge within his own mind, as his will seemed to divide. Before him he saw the stage, but he also saw, merged and overlain, the twisting streets and high, gabled buildings of the Old Quarter. Street hawkers and prostitutes, artists and patrons, opium-dreamers and ne'er-do-wells and drunkards all crossed to and fro before him, their forms passing ghostlike through those of the performers on the theater stage. He stared with feverish craving at Amoretta, and yet his mind roved, searching, hunting, until...

_There._

The orchestra played, strings and brass, woodwinds and percussion blending to support the soaring voices of the singers, and yet bells jangled a discord, jester's bells adorning the high red caps of tiny black devils. Like grinning, clawed shadows the imps crept and swarmed, giggling to the accompaniment of the bells. The low, rumbling voices of massive demons, horned and hoofed and winged, growled a counterpoint, and the tormented sobs of women, their screams stifled in their throats served as harmony. Over it all soared the shining, angelic voice of the soprano, as Amoretta sang her concluding lament, drawing tears from so many of the audience.

The Crow arched his back as a release that was not sexual but was still deliciously, sensually intimate cascaded through him, as women died and the curtain fell. He sagged back in his seat, his body utterly relaxed, all tension gone, and the mocking laughter of a devil screeched in his ears unheard by all around him.


	2. Chapter One

The greenroom was as crowded as it ever was after the closing performance of _The Crimson Key_. A veritable crush of patrons thronged backstage, hoping to present their congratulations to the stars, or else to make their acquaintance. The crowd was more male than female-a fair number of them were there for the sake of the girls in the ballet corps, from which came many of the mistresses of the capital's well-to-do gentlemen. But it was the stars who were the shining lights, and it was the newest diva, the ingenue-turned-lead soprano Amoretta Virgine upon whom the greatest attention was showered.

Young Kurt Miller found himself buffeted to and fro by the press of bodies as he tried to make his way to Miss Virgine's side. With deft use of his elbows he managed to fend off much of the crush, at least to the extent that the bouquet of scarlet roses he bore was not damaged.

The singer herself stood in the middle of the crowd, quietly and it seemed shyly accepting their congratulations. The more effusive compliments she often cut off, thanking the giver when he would pause for breath and brushing him aside. She exchanged a few words with the saturnine Baron de Sangri, whom Miller was relieved to notice had brought no flowers, then had a large sheaf of lilies pressed upon her by the foreign diplomat, Prince Tokayev.

Aware of the Prince's growing reputation as a ladies' man, Miller surged forward at once, thrusting his bouquet upon the beautiful singer.

"My dear Miss Virgine, please accept these flowers as a token of my respect and admiration. I've never before heard such an exquisite performance, Elie brought to life so beautifully."

"A poor compliment, this," Tokayev sneered down his aquiline nose at the young man. "To be the best in a boy's experience? What, is the most you can say of her magnificence that she was better than the one time, two times perhaps, you have seen this opera?"

Miller flushed with anger and humiliation.

"Why, you-"

"You must permit me, Miss Virgine," Tokayev went on in his rich, lightly accented baritone that had charmed so many women, "to escort you to Garnier's Cafe for refreshment. A friendly hand to disperse the press of this rabble will surely not offend."

"Don't listen to him, Miss Virgine!" Miller shot back. "I may be young, but at least my heart is true, unlike this...this roue."

"Roue, is it?" Tokayev snapped, much to the interest of the crowd. "There is little honor in chastizing an unruly child, but if in this fashion you keep on, I will not hold my hand!"

"If you think-"

"Amoretta!"

It was a woman's voice, and the singer's face brightened at once at the sound of it.

"I'm here!" Miss Virgine called, holding up a hand.

The woman approached, sliding through the gathered crowd with surprising ease, even piercing the clustered gentlemen surrounding the soprano without much effort. Some of the men-though not, Miller noted, Prince Tokayev-actually moved back to make room. It made her easy to notice: a tall honey-blonde with unbound hair, wearing a rich purple gown that matched her eyes. She seemed young, perhaps twenty or a little more, a couple of years older than Miss Virgine. Her gaze flicked from face to face, taking in the knot of eager adherents.

"You've won yourself a lot of admirers, Amoretta." She reached out and brushed her fingers over one of the bouquets that stuffed the girl's arms. "A lot of flowers, too. I hope Gaff doesn't have any allergies."

"I don't think so, Lillet. Elves are spirits of nature, so they shouldn't have any kind of negative physical reactions to it." The singer's voice, Miller noted, was high and sweet, with a hint of sensual breathiness. It was the kind of voice he could listen to for hours on end.

The violet-eyed woman, the one Miss Virgine had called Lillet, raised her hand from the flowers and instead brushed the singer's cheek. Miller's fingers tingled at the sight; he envied this Lillet the fleeting contact even as he wanted to slap her hand away from Miss Virgine's skin.

"Should I have brought you a bouquet too, then?"

"Why? You could bring flowers in from the garden when we get home."

Lillet's lips curled into a smug, knowing smile and her gaze flicked in an arc, meeting as many of the watching eyes as she could without actually turning her head. Miller didn't get it at first; he was young, after all. Then he realized.

_When. We. Get. Home._

She _couldn't_ mean...?

"In that case, let me give you something else."

Lillet bent her head and brushed her lips teasingly against the shorter girl's, once, twice, as if casting out a lure to the singer-who struck at it, arching her neck and pressing her mouth hard to Lillet's. There was nothing friendly or sisterlike in the kiss, and it made the serpents of jealousy twist and roil in Miller's belly.

"Here, now! This is hardly the place for that!" he said. Both women looked at him in surprise, as did quite a few of the other men.

"I suppose you have a point," Lillet sighed, then turned back to Miss Virgine. "Shall I wait for you at the stage door? I'll have the carriage brought around."

"That would be nice. I might be a while, though. I'll have to finish here, then get changed out of my costume."

"I don't mind waiting for you."

She half-turned, giving the singer one last, lingering look, then walked away. Miller stared after her, emotions roiling, and he wasn't the only one.

"Who was that woman?" he exclaimed, surprise and wounded pride clouding his good sense. "How dare she take such liberties?"

"Know her, you do not?" Tokayev was the one who answered him. "Not much at Court, you are?"

"At Court? What, who is she?" Miller snapped, ignoring the stab at his pride, the Prince's jab at his social status.

"Lillet Blan, she is. Mage Consul to Her Majesty."

"Mage...Consul?" Miller stammered, trying to wrap his mind around the concept.

"The chief magician of the kingdom? Surely of this you have heard? She is said to be as skilled a witch as your famous Gammel Dore."

The name crashed through Miller's mind, Tokayev's sharp words at last cutting through the young man's emotions. He did know Lillet Blan's name, had heard the stories and rumors of how amazing a magical prodigy she was. _No wonder so many of the men made way for her_ , he thought. _Who argues with someone who can turn you into a bug?_ And how she'd acted had simple enough: she'd sent a clear message to the throng of admirers. _Hands off. She's mine._ A sentiment which Miss Virgine seemed to fully agree with.

 _Maybe...maybe she's_ enchanted _her._ The thought swirled through his mind, appealing and exciting. Evil witches were supposed to do that sort of thing, weren't they? And the sober puritanism of Miller's merchant-class, respectable burgher background certainly knew what it thought of a woman who was both a magician and carried on a romance with her own sex. His imagination ran wild-perhaps he could _save_ Miss Virgine from the witch's clutches! The fantasy grew and grew in his mind-he saw himself as the heroic rescuer, freeing the innocent girl from her captor's spell, carrying her off to marry her...until at last, like a castle built of elaborate spires and flying buttresses without a solid foundation, his fantasy fell to pieces under the weight of its own absurdities.

 _Or_ , he admitted to himself, _I could just be an idiot who became infatuated with a woman who already loves someone else._

There must have been something of his thoughts in his face, for Prince Tokayev smiled at him without the mockery from before.

"And so do the young learn wisdom," he said, not unkindly. "Come," he announced, clapping Miller firmly on the shoulder, "my guest you will be tonight. We will toast our bad fortune, and seek the company of ladies more amenable to our station. Take heart, for such disappointments are what make one a man."

It was amazing, Miller thought, how much easier it was to appreciate a man's good qualities when they weren't fighting over the same girl.

"All right," he decided. "Why should we waste our time on a woman whose heart is taken?"

"Why, indeed?"

-X X X-

"For God's sake, clear these people out of here! Do you want a riot on our hands?" Raoul Ballatore barked. The Inspector of the Watch wasn't really all that concerned about the two dozen or so curiosity-seekers who were pressing close to the alley mouth, trying to get a look part the watchmen who were holding the line. It was more of a tactic to clear the constables away from the crime scene than anything else, to keep them from treading evidence underfoot and to spare their stomachs. The first constable to find the bodies hadn't been able to hold his, and with good reason.

Ballatore hooked his thumbs into his swordbelt and looked at the tableau again. The word wasn't inappropriate, he thought; this scene had been carefully set for the finder's viewing "pleasure."

"Someone's pleasure, anyway," he muttered. He'd like to get his hands around the throat of whomever took joy in this. This was the kind of crime for which the violence of public hanging was a well-suited punishment.

There were two victims this time, both of them women. One of them had been hung from a metal post that jutted from above a door halfway along the alley. The bar, Ballatore noted, was a signpost; the sign itself had been torn down by force and tossed along the alley to give the killer a place to hang the woman from. Her hands and arms had been tied, mounting them in place so that they clutched the head of the second victim to her breast.

It was the second victim that was the horrifying one. Not merely content with decapitating her, she had been disemboweled, her belly torn open and her innards lying in a glistening pool of blood. Even that, brutal as it was, wasn't the worst of it. What made Ballatore have to fight down his gorge in the stinking alley was that the first corpse hadn't been hung by a rope at all, but by a length of the other corpse's intestine, and the binding fixing her arms in place holding the head were strips of skin ripped from the eviscerated girl's abdomen.

They were girls, too, eighteen or even younger though already their faces had begun to show the ravages of drink and disease common to the profession suggested by their cheap but flashy dresses. Prostitutes, common streetwalkers rather than expensive house-girls or even more expensive mistresses. There would have been little enough hope or happiness in their lives as it was, without-

 _Details, man, details!_ Ballatore snapped at himself. There was a time to see the forest for the trees, but this wasn't it. Stare close enough at a mosaic, no matter how ugly or vile, and all you saw were chips of colored tile.

 _The sign._ It was lying several yards down the alley from the corpses, as if it had been flung aside. The thought that it had been torn down by force looked to have been accurate; the place where the bolts had been sunk in to hold the chains had been literally ripped out of the sign, and the exposed wood was light-colored, not weathered by the elements.

He wondered what kind of strength that had taken. The person must have been huge, or in the grip of some overwhelming emotion. But then again, what was insanity but emotion unchecked by reason, and the acts performed against the two women were certainly lunatic.

"Inspector," someone called. Ballatore turned back and saw a constable approaching. By the uniformed watchman's side was a woman wearing a plain, even drab gray dress and a white lace cap typical of well-to-do dowagers. She was around thirty, with sharp features but expressive chocolate-brown eyes. "Ms. Riesling is here."

"Janice; I'm glad you could make it," he said with genuine affection.

"I'm glad to see you too, Raoul, though not in these conditions." She shuddered, gripping her forearms tightly. "This is...vile."

Ballatore nodded. There was no more he could say to that.

"What kind of person could do this?"

The Inspector sighed.

"I was hoping you could help tell me."

Janice Riesling was an expert who worked for the Watch, only her field of skill wasn't scientific or technical. She was a witch.

Looking around herself, she shuddered again.

"You want me to try to call up the spirits of these girls?"

"You once told me that the souls of the recently dead often linger near their bodies. This killing isn't more than a couple of hours old. If they can point me in the right direction..."

Riesling took a deep breath.

"All right. I'll give it a try."

She took out her wand, then drew in several deep breaths, as if centering herself for the work ahead. The Inspector had worked with her before, so he knew more or less what to expect, but it still amazed him. In his father's time, magicians were dubious characters at best and in his grandfather's time they were actively hunted, subject to arrest and burning at the stake. From what he knew those had been the attitudes towards magic that had prevailed since the kingdom had been founded. Centuries had passed with magic being either persecuted or viewed suspiciously as the whim of the people suggested. Now, though, thanks to Her Majesty and Gammel Dore, there were magicians operating openly and freely, officially in the kingdom's service.

Looking past Riesling at the dangling corpse, Ballatore found himself glad of it. When faced with that kind of horror, it was comforting that at least some supernatural forces were on his side.

The witch began to sketch out a pattern on the ground before her, tracing her wand's tip over the filthy cobbles. It took her about a minute or so to finish. She then held the wand above the area where she'd sketched and her body was gripped by a sudden tension, her face strained as if she were exerting herself in some way Ballatore couldn't see. After a couple more minutes of this, her struggle was won, and the pattern she'd sketched was outlined in pale blue light. She'd explained in the past that this was a Rune, a magic circle that concentrated the power of a magician to summon familiars, replacing the need for chants and incantations, vile potions brewed up in cauldrons, and the other trappings associated in the popular mind with magic.

Ballatore still didn't like to look at the Rune; the necromantic light was unnatural and frightening. If he stared at it too long he even thought he could see figures in it, writhing images of human souls trying to fight their way out of Purgatory and into the living world. Instead, he tried to look anywhere else, letting Riesling do her work without interruption. The Rune's glow lit up the alley, illuminating the cobbles slicked with blood and foulness, the trash and debris scattered in every angle and corner.

_And something else, besides._

It was on the alley wall just above where the broken sign lay, as if the torn-down placard had been left as a marker. In the darkness, though, it had passed unnoticed; the focused beams of the Watch's dark-lanterns hadn't been played along the alley walls away from the bodies. A message had been painted there scrawled in the blood of the deceased. The lettering was surprisingly neat, marred only by places where droplets, still wet, had trickled down like tears. The message seemed, at first glance, strange and impenetrable: _My heart is hollow; my soul is ash._ Yet something about it nagged at Ballatore, an insistent drumbeat against his mind that he _should_ know what it meant.

Behind him, there was a deep groan, a sepulchral sound that echoed from the alley walls. Ballatore turned and saw, floating above Riesling's Rune, a twisted shape of pale fire a foot or two in height and the same color as the Rune. It was a corpse candle, a once-living spirit, the ghost of a dead human.

"Spirit!" Riesling ordered. "You are bound to obey me! Are you the ghost of one of the women recently murdered here?"

The spirit began to writhe and bob in mid-air, twisting its bodiless shape in on itself and flicking off gouts of light. Ballatore got the sense of agitation, of emotion, suggesting that it was indeed the ghost of one of the dead prostitutes.

"Show me!" Riesling ordered it. "Show me what you can about your death, so I can catch the one responsible."

When she'd been able to successfully do this in the past, the spirit would take on shapes, project images of its killer, perhaps the murder weapon, whatever it might have seen. Although the testimony of the dead was not evidence in court, it could point the Watch in the correct direction and save valuable time and effort.

This time, though, no easy answer seemed forthcoming. The ghost's agitation seemed to increase, twisting and bobbing, flexing and changing as it burned. Then, suddenly, a ghastly scream exploded through the alleyway, a high-pitched wail full of horror and torment that made Ballatore shudder as if his own soul was the one suffering. The light blazed up, burning fiercely, and then was gone, the ghost and the Rune suddenly vanished, both snuffed out as the last note of the banshee howl died away. Trembling uncontrollably, Riesling dropped to her knees.

"Janice, are you all right?" Ballatore asked at once, hurrying to her side. The phrase his mind had attached to the ghostly wail-"banshee howl"-echoed in his thoughts as he recalled legends of those who died after hearing such a sound.

"I...I think so," she said, still shaking. "It...it was her, one of them at least, but I couldn't hold her. She was still too close to life, too close to her pain, and was crazed by it. It made her into a more powerful spirit than I could control, and the backlash shattered my Rune."

The explanation made sense to Ballatore; he'd had to arrest or subdue lunatics in the past, both those suffering from genuine madness and those out of their minds temporarily from drink, terror, or rage. They seemed able to exert a strength no sane person could match. Apparently the same held true for the dead.

"But you yourself aren't hurt?"

She licked her lips nervously, then seemed to gather herself, the trembling starting to ease.

"Yes, I'm all right."

He extended a hand and helped her to her feet.

"I'm glad; when I heard that scream like a devil's song-" He broke off suddenly as it came to him like a thunderbolt. "Of course!" He snapped his fingers loudly. "The posing, the message...it all makes sense now. It's not random in the slightest, and I know what it's referring to. Come on; we've got work to do before morning."


	3. Chapter Two

Birds were chirping merrily outside the windows, and their song plus the warm sunlight that bathed the bed combined to wake Lillet Blan. She rose from sleep slowly, at the gentle pace of a natural waking into the pleasures of the morning. She still hadn't gotten used to living in the townhouse even though it had been nearly nine months. Lillet had grown up in a country farmhouse with her parents and two little brothers, then had a room at the Magic Academy, and later a suite at the Royal House of Magic, but upon being made Mage Consul she'd been able for the first time in her life to have a house of her own instead of living under someone else's roof.

"Good morning, Lillet."

Lillet smiled, enjoying the sound of Amoretta's voice, high and sweet with a hint of breathiness in it. She could feel that the other woman was sitting up, her hip pressed against Lillet's arm. She'd probably been awake for a while, but hadn't gotten out of bed. After five years together, Amoretta hadn't changed; she still always wanted to be touching whenever she could, and at least in the same room when physical contact wasn't possible.

The thought made her happy, but also a bit embarrassed about how she'd acted the night before. Jealousy and possessiveness weren't about love, after all, and she'd gone out of her way to stake a very public claim on her lover. At least Amoretta hadn't been embarrassed or ashamed; she was too fundamentally honest to hide her feelings.

Lillet opened her eyes.

"Good morning, little love."

Amoretta had a book open in her lap; she slipped a ribbon into it to mark her place and set it aside.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Uh-huh."

Lillet sat up and stretched, feeling the pleasantly tired ache in her arms and legs. She smiled again and gave Amoretta a quick kiss.

"I'm so lucky to have you."

"Yes," Amoretta agreed, smiling back, "but so am I. Although it really isn't luck. I'm with you because you love me, and because I love you."

Lillet chuckled. Amoretta saw things the way no one else did. Then again, there wasn't quite anyone like her in the world. After all, Amoretta wasn't human but a homunculus, an artificial being created through alchemy. Even among homunculi she was unique, as her existence had been anchored around a core, a previously existing spirit rather than being built strictly in the laboratory. This gave her abilities other homunculi lacked, most significantly the power to move around in the world separated from the flask that contained her life energy. It also gave her a perspective on things that no one else had.

Especially since the core spirit wasn't human, or even something like an elf or a ghost. It was an angel.

Lillet tried not to think about that, but there was no getting around the fact. She'd seen it for herself. The most painful memory of her young life was of Amoretta killing herself, the homunculus shell dying and the angel released, shining like a pure, golden sun, burning away the archduke of Hell, Grimlet. Lillet had been trying to save everyone at the Silver Star Tower from the devil and so had intentionally summoned it, hoping to command it, but her will and power couldn't hold Grimlet-no human magician's could, not alone, and so Amoretta had stepped in, calmly throwing away her own life to save her love's.

It hadn't been forever, of course, since after all Amoretta was right next to her. Falling through the loops of time, Lillet had finally been able to make it all come out right. Sometimes she thought it was unfair that she alone had to suffer with the memories of the pasts that had never been while everyone else blithely continued on.

When she had nightmares, they were inevitably of that moment, of the pure light of Heaven blazing before her.

"Lillet, is something wrong? You look so strange."

"I love you so much, it almost hurts sometimes."

"I'm sorry."

"You're...sorry?"

"Love shouldn't cause pain; it should take it away."

Lillet thought about that.

"I think...we humans enjoy love while we have it, but we're always aware that it will end someday." Realizing how that might sound, she hurried on. "I don't mean that the feelings will, but that we're all mortal, that some day one or the other person will be gone. We all know that, in our hearts, and it makes love poignant as well as joyous. I think it's why romantic tragedies have such power over us, because they express the fears we all have."

Amoretta frowned thoughtfully.

"I have noticed," she agreed, "that since I've been singing publicly, the audiences do seem more affected by the tragic songs, though I never understood why." She sighed. "I wish I could remember my life before I was given this body. Then I'd know if love endures in the next world."

"Maybe we're not meant to know those things." She snuggled her head against Amoretta's shoulder. "Besides, just having you in one world is a priceless gift by itself." She gave a sudden yawn as a wave of sleepiness passed over her. "And this is way too early in the morning to be talking about such important things without coffee."

"I rang the kitchen half an hour ago, so they should have breakfast ready by the time you're dressed."

"I will never know how you can tell how long I'll be asleep."

"I can...feel the rhythm of it," Amoretta said with a shrug. "I don't know how else to describe it."

"I just know it's useful, because breakfast is always hot and ready when I am." Lillet gave her a quick peck on the cheek and reached for her robe.

Half an hour later she was seated on the terrace overlooking the sun-drenched garden, dressed and hopefully ready to face the day. Covered platters were set out on the stone table; Lillet had already transferred eggs, sausage, toast, and several slices of cheese to her own plate and was savoring a steaming cup of coffee. Amoretta nibbled delicately at a sweet roll, since her body didn't work quite the same way as a human's she didn't need the same amount of food. What amazed Lillet was that so many people in the capital routinely ate the same breakfast as the homunculus. She herself had grown up on her parents' farm and had gotten used to the kind of breakfasts that gave one the energy to get through a day of chores. Lillet might not have milked a cow or mucked out a stable in years, but practicing magic burned just as much fuel.

She was just picking up her fork when the relaxing ease of the morning was broken.

"Um, sorry to interrupt, but there's a couple of people here to see you."

Lillet turned to see that the elf boy Gaff had come out on the terrace. Three feet tall, he could have been mistaken for a human child but for his pointed ears and typical green elven garb. He'd been with Lillet since she was a student; originally the caretaker of her room at the Academy, he'd left with her when she graduated and was now the majordomo of the townhouse. Lillet had the feeling, though she'd never asked, that it was a point of pride for him as an elf not only to be in the service of a powerful witch but that he was actually in charge of her human staff.

"Who is it, Gaff?"

"They're with the Watch. An Inspector Raoul Ballatore and a Ms. Riesling. They're not here to see you, though, Lillet. They're here to see Amoretta."

"To see me? Did they say why?"

Gaff shook his head.

"No, only that it was official business."

Lillet and Amoretta shared a surprised look.

"Please bring them here," the homunculus decided, giving Lillet her second surprise in as many moments.

"Why here?" she asked as Gaff passed back into the house.

"I assumed that you'd insist on meeting them with me, and I didn't want you to have to interrupt your breakfast."

That was sweet, but if an Inspector of the Watch was there to bother Amoretta, Lillet didn't think she'd get much eating done. She didn't trouble saying so, though, but addressed herself to the food. After all, she hated cold eggs.

Gaff returned in a couple of minutes, escorting the two Watch officers. Ballatore wore his red-piped navy blue uniform with ease; its military cut suited his quick, efficient movements. He was slightly above average height, lean of build, and about thirty-five, with premature gray dusting his sandy brown moustache. The brass hilt of his sword gleamed in the morning sun, throwing back fire. Riesling had sharp cheekbones and large brown eyes, but wore a gray dress and white lace cap instead of a uniform, which was odd. From what Lillet knew, the capital's official police always went uniformed except when on special undercover assignments.

"Mage Consul Blan, Miss Virgine, may I present to you Inspector of the Watch Raoul Ballatore and Ms. Janice Riesling," Gaff said formally as if he'd been doing all his life.

"Good morning, Inspector, Ms. Riesling."

"Mage Consul Blan," Ballatore said, nodding to her to suggest a bow, then repeated the gesture towards Amoretta. "Miss Virgine." He turned back to Lillet. "I beg your pardon, Mage Consul, but we would like to speak to Miss Virgine."

"Go ahead."

"I meant, privately," he came out and said.

"No," Lillet told him directly without losing her smile. Sometimes Amoretta's plain truthfulness was the best style to take.

The answer seemed to take him off-guard.

"Mage Consul, this is an official inquiry."

"And as loyal subjects of Her Majesty, we're glad to cooperate with you, but I will not allow you to come into our home and badger Amoretta without explaining yourself."

Something flashed in Ballatore's eyes and Riesling scowled openly. Amoretta, though, quickly stepped in.

"Inspector, Ms. Riesling, won't you sit down? Would you like a cup of coffee?" she offered, gesturing at the silver urn.

Riesling looked like she wanted to bark out something, probably negative, but deferred to her superior. Ballatore paused, obviously considering which way he wanted to take the interview, then pulled out one of the cane-backed chairs.

"I'd appreciate that, Miss Virgine. It's been a long night."

"You've been up all night, Inspector?" Lillet asked.

He nodded.

"I'm sure you understand how the work can grab you, Mage Consul, particularly when time is of the essence."

Lillet nodded back. If he was going to be civilized, so would she. Amoretta reached for the coffee service, which always had four cups regardless of the fact that there were only two of them expected at breakfast. She poured a cup for the Inspector, though Riesling deferred. He drank gratefully, finishing the cup in two long drafts.

"Miss Virgine," he said, "are you familiar with the lines, 'My heart is hollow; my soul is ash'?"

"Yes; they're from the closing aria that Elie sings in _The Crimson Key_."

"You play Elie in that opera at the City Theater, don't you?"

"I played her," Amoretta corrected. "Last night was closing night."

Ballatore nodded.

"Can you describe the final scene for me?"

"Elie and her lover Artur had agreed to elope, only Elie's father discovered their plan. He bribed the messenger to alter the rendezvous note so that she would come half an hour late. When Artur arrives, he walks into a trap laid by the father and his men. He cuts open Artur's belly and leaves him to bleed to death. Elie arrives and finds her lover dying painfully. He begs her to end his pain; at first she can't bear to, but she finally gives in and uses his sword to cut off his head." Amoretta frowned. "It's not a very realistic scene. Artur could hardly sing half of a passionate duet while dying in that way, and a maiden without battle training could hardly decapitate a man in a single stroke. The audiences seem to like it, though. Lillet and I were just talking about why that is this morning."

"Personally," Ballatore said, "I like a good melodrama-if it's kept on the stage. Go on."

"Elie then takes Artur's head in her arms and sings a last lament about how without her love her soul is barren and her life hopeless, and so at last she hangs herself from a nearby branch."

"Why are you asking about _The Crimson Key_ , Inspector Ballatore?" Lillet asked.

"Because it relates to a crime. Last night, a woman was hanged in an alley. She was holding the head of a second woman, whose corpse was also there, disemboweled as well as decapitated. The quotation I asked about was written in the second victim's blood on the wall."

Lillet gasped.

"Then somebody deliberately staged the murders to look like the end of the opera?"

"That's the obvious conclusion, Mage Consul. Unfortunately, the average Watch officer doesn't have a lot of familiarity with the opera. I only recognized this one because my sister had taken me to it a couple of years ago. As I said, I enjoy melodrama."

He took a leather-bound notebook from his uniform pocket and checked a notation.

"Four weeks ago, there was a similar crime, apparently senseless violence perpetrated against a prostitute. Her body was literally torn into four pieces."

Lillet and Amoretta both shuddered, but Ballatore went on relentlessly.

"Mr. Saint, the manager of the City Theater, told me that this was how the heroine of _Dorothea_ dies, drawn and quartered as a traitor when her husband's rebellion fails. He also confirmed that you, Miss Virgine, sang Dorothea as your role before _The Crimson Key_ , and that the date of the murder was also the closing night of that opera."

Amoretta made a high, gasping sound that was almost a scream, and Lillet reached out and took her hand. Ballatore went on, however, with an almost relentless force.

"I also spoke to your manager, a Mr. Ouzowen. He informed me that before you were signed by the City Theater's company, you sang at the Camden Lane music hall as a soloist, performing a combination of classical songs, popular melodies, and operatic arias. Is that the case?"

"Y-yes."

"Your final night there was, I believe, December 19th? On that date, there was also a murder. A prostitute was burned alive. I'm told that the heroine of _Winter's Lament_ dies this way, and you routinely performed songs from that opera?"

With a wordless cry Amoretta buried her face against Lillet's shoulder and began to sob. Lillet held her, cradling her gently while staring at the Inspector. Horror and fury warred inside her.

"What are you trying to do, Inspector Ballatore?"

"Isn't it obvious? You can't deny that there's a connection here. I could have been the City Theater if it had only been the second and third incidents, but the first killing makes it clear that the one or ones doing this are following Miss Virgine's performances and for whatever reason are arranging a tableau in blood to celebrate or curse each closing. We want to know what she knows about who might be doing this and why."

"You're crazy if you think Amoretta would have anything to do with murder!"

"Not just murder, Mage Consul Blan, but also magic."


	4. Chapter Three

"Magic?" Lillet asked, surprised. "What does magic have to do with these killings?" Her interest was twofold, now not only for Amoretta's sake but in her own right as the kingdom's ranking advisor on magical matters.

Inspector Ballatore slipped his notebook back into his pocket.

"In the experience of the Watch-and this, I may add, is the great benefit of having a professional police instead of an ad hoc militia like the Albionese-these kinds of sadistic crimes tend to be carried out by a single person. That isn't always the case, as even in lunacy there can be leaders and followers, but the _kind_ of insanity that makes a person murder isn't usually a thing that can be shared. Do you follow?"

"I certainly can believe that."

"What bothered me as a Watch officer, then, was the third incident, last night's. There were two separate victims, both killed there in the alley. One can imagine, for example, a gentleman enticing a prostitute into the alley to conduct her trade, then surprising and killing her. What I can't see is a single man killing two at once in elaborate, ritualistic fashion. To meet with the killer's little 'game,' they had to die in a certain way and no other, and that demands control of the situation. The alley isn't even an enclosed space; the second girl could run or scream...it just isn't likely that a single killer could accomplish these crimes under those circumstances."

"I see," Lillet said, still cradling Amoretta against her. "With magic, a single person _could_ act as many, by summoning familiar spirits to give him or her extra sets of hands."

"That's it exactly," Ballatore said. "Ms. Riesling investigated the scene, and found the residue of sorcery." He glanced at his companion. "Why don't you explain it to her, so we don't have to bother with layman's terms?"

"I doubt that I need to give Mage Consul Blan a lesson in elementary spell-tracing."

She didn't, although Lillet didn't understand why she had to be so snippy about it. Employing magic exerted control over the natural laws, and this distortion left traces that another magician could examine, determining what kind of magical Runes had been created in an area. The effect did not last long-a few hours at most-but it did exist. Certain familiars left similar traces for the same reason. Those of Glamour did not, since they were expressions _of_ the natural law, and neither did those of Alchemy, which art manipulated nature in artificial ways but was still subject to it. Necromancy and Sorcery, though, involved summoning spirits from other existences into the world, and they, too could be traced. Unfortunately, none of this gave any information about the magician who had done the summoning.

"No, you don't. You're a magician, Ms. Riesling?"

"Yes. There are a few of us that work for the Watch. It helps to show the people that magic can be used to protect and help them."

"Oh, are you related to Royal Magician Manfred Riesling?"

"He's my father," she answered stiffly.

Lillet knew the elder Riesling from her own days at the Royal House of Magic, but his daughter did not seem to be in any mood to exchange pleasantries-and given Amoretta's distress, neither was Lillet.

"So what kind of sorcery did you find? The traces of familiars?"

"Yes, definitely that, but there was something more besides extra hands."

"A Rune?"

If at all possible, Riesling looked even more disconcerted than she had before.

"No, not a Rune...It was similar, but something else, some very definite trace of sorcery being performed, something powerful."

A shudder ran through Lillet. Sorcery was the magical art of employing the power of devils. Ordinary sorcery kept the creatures under tight control, for even a minor imp or demon given free reign could do terrible evil. Lillet's own experiences, though, had given her hard lessons in the risks that came with treating with infernal powers.

That something involved with the diabolic had fixated on Amoretta, though, made Lillet's terror acute. To a devil Amoretta was all but irresistible: an angelic soul with the purity of Heaven, but placed into a fleshly body that was subject to temptation.

Oddly enough, it was this revelation that seemed to break through Amoretta's sorrow and let her regain control. Her tears slowed, and she looked up at Riesling.

"If there is a devil involved, then we have to stop it," she said flatly. Her voice held no lingering traces of her previous sobs the way a human's would.

"I don't _know_ what was done," Riesling said, obviously frustrated. "It was definitely sorcerous magic, but it didn't match any of the ordinary Runes."

"You should investigate it, Lillet," Amoretta said. "You might be able to identify something she couldn't."

"It's too late now," Riesling said. "The traces will be gone."

"Of the familiars or an ordinary Rune, yes," Lillet said, "but you know that the stronger the magic, the greater the distortion in the world and the longer it takes to repair."

"That is a point...and, of course, you're far more skilled at sorcery than I am. With your interest in Miss Virgine, I'm sure that you have motivation to know all the answers."

Lillet's blood ran cold.

"Are you trying to imply that _I'm_ responsible for this?"

"Lillet would _never_ do something so horrible!" Amoretta said fiercely.

"No, of course not," Ballatore said at once. "Look, I'd be grateful for any help you can offer, Mage Consul, in explaining what might be happening magically. As for you, Miss Virgine, if you can remember anything that might be relevant, some overzealous admirer perhaps, please let us know." He stood up, gave a little bow to them both. "We'd best be going. I apologize if the circumstances and our lack of sleep have made us a bit snappish."

Lillet noted that Riesling didn't apologize, but she didn't push the point.

"I'm glad that you came and told us, Inspector. If some lunatic is obsessed with Amoretta, I need to know."

He nodded.

"Good day, Mage Consul, Miss Virgine."

Ballatore left, Riesling in his wake.

"Lillet, what are we going to do?" Amoretta asked as soon as they were gone. "I...I'm inspiring someone to _murder_!"

Lillet held her close.

"I'm going to do what I promised. I'm going to keep you safe no matter what the threat."

-X X X-

Ballatore was fuming as the hired carriage took himself and Riesling away from Lillet's townhouse.

"Janice, just what did you think you were doing? You as good as accused the Mage Consul to her face that she's butchering women in honor of her lover."

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it!" Ballatore crashed his fist against the carriage door. "Damn it, Janice, you've been stewing ever since Saint told us where Miss Virgine lives. What's the problem?"

"Maybe she _did_ do it! I wouldn't put anything past that deviant!"

Ballatore gave her a cool, assessing look.

"So you think that because she's a lesbian she's capable of sadistic murder?"

"That isn't what I meant!" Riesling snapped.

"Then what _do_ you mean? What exactly is it that has your nose out of joint?"

"It's that girl, Amoretta. How old would you say she is?"

"Eighteen or so?"

"Then would you be surprised to know she came to the capital with Lillet Blan some five years ago and she hasn't aged a day since?"

Ballatore was momentarily stunned.

"What?"

"You heard me. Blan herself grew up from a teenager to a young woman, but not her lover. Amoretta Virgine doesn't age. Do you know why?"

"Obviously not. Go on."

"They don't exactly shout it from the rooftops, but most of the Royal Magicians know; I heard it from my father. She's a homunculus."

"Wait, isn't that some kind of-"

"Artificial life, created by alchemy. She's incredibly advanced; I can't even begin to imagine the level of knowledge and the sheer power it took to make her. That isn't the point, though. The point is that Lillet Blan cooked up a love doll for herself in the lab, built to her own specifications. And if that isn't disgusting enough, remember that a homunculus is an alchemy _familiar_ , bound to serve its creator as part of the magic." Riesling snarled and looked aside. "And _that_ is the kind of person who is the public face of magic in this kingdom. There are still parts of the country _today_ where local lords and fundamentalist priests will burn magicians at the stake. Oh, I'm sure Blan is a powerful magician, but public acceptance of magic is too new to risk having a sexual pervert as Mage Consul."

Ballatore felt his gut twist in revulsion. A career in the Watch had taught him far too much about what men and women did with one another in private. It had left him jaded about others' sexual practices; so long as no one was unconsenting-force, youth, or chemical state-then he cared only if it was relevant as a motive for crime. But this was different. Who _made_ something that could walk and talk and think like a person for their own gratification?

Did Amoretta Virgine count as a victim, he wondered? She hadn't acted like one. When upset she'd clung to Lillet for comfort and protection. On the other hand, Lillet had refused to leave them alone. Was she being protective-or controlling? Was a homunculus even capable of thinking rebellious thoughts? Or was her mind enchanted, perhaps even from creation? Everyone had heard stories and myths about love spells.

No, it might not have been legally actionable, but it sickened him.

"Do you think she's guilty, Janice?" she asked quietly.

"Maybe. I just don't _know_ ," Riesling snapped, clenching her fists in her lap in frustration. "The murders have something to do with that homunculus; they have to. And there's magic involved, sorcery-but I don't know what. It might be her."

"Or it might be some enemy of hers. You can't get to be that powerful without making a few-the ones she stepped on and the ones who are jealous or resentful. There's a twisted kind of revenge gained by attacking a person's loved ones. Torture certainly isn't beyond the kind of person who could do this..."

He let his voice trail away, then gathered himself and looked directly at Riesling.

"Janice, I have to know one thing. We'll be interacting with the Mage Consul one way or another from here on out. It's certain that Miss Virgine is at the heart of it, and where she is, Lillet Blan will be. I need to know if you can deal with her civilly."

"Raoul-"

"I mean it, Janice. We have one goal, and that is to catch the monster that's committing these murders. If Blan is innocent than picking a fight with a powerful government minister isn't going to make our investigation any easier. A word in the right ears and we could be off the case, perhaps out of our jobs. And if she's _guilty_...well, you know how important it is to have ironclad evidence when accusing the Powers That Be of crime."

Riesling scowled in annoyance, but she knew the Inspector was right.

"Oh, I'll bite my tongue right enough, though it won't be easy. I hope she _did_ do it, so I can be a part of bringing her down."

"So long as you don't let that wish get in the way of the evidence."

"I won't-if we _have_ any evidence. Where do you plan to get any?"

"Well, Miss Virgine couldn't-or wouldn't-tell if there was someone obsessed or overly interested in her. If there's someone who's been lurking about, though, the staff at the City Theater will have noticed."


	5. Chapter Four

"What are we going to do, Lillet?" Amoretta wanted to know. Lillet could hardly blame her for her worry. Inspector Ballatore's grim news had utterly killed both her appetite and the happy mood; even the sunlight bathing the garden seemed to have turned from a warm glow to a harsh glare.

Lillet squeezed her lover's hand reassuringly.

"We're going to do what we always do. We're going to find out who's responsible for this and we're going to stop him, her, or them before they can hurt more people."

Amoretta smiled then, a shy, sweet look full of blinding confidence.

"That's all right, then," she declared. It wasn't from ignorance, Lillet knew; it was simply that Amoretta trusted her with an intensity that was virtually religious. She was almost childlike in that respect, with the kind of faith that a young girl had in her parent. The beautiful homunculus was such a study in contrasts-but then again, Lillet supposed, so were most people.

"I think I'll start by investigating the most recent crime scene, like I told the Inspector. The kind of magic that's involved could really make a difference in what we need to look for. There are still renegades out there who served Archmage Calvaros, and they'd be skilled sorcerers. On the other hand, a lunatic might attract devils with the sheer evil of the acts. Or it might be a devil rather than a magician responsible-we both know how attractive you are to them."

"That's true. Be careful, though. It might be that this is a challenge to you, and I'm only the subject of it."

"I won't let my guard down."

"Do you think that the Inspector really suspects you, Lillet?"

"Well, if the killer is someone magically talented and obsessed with you, then I do fit the description, but I have better ways of living out that obsession."

Amoretta frowned at her.

"You didn't answer my question, Lillet."

"No, I guess I didn't." Lillet tapped a finger against her lower lip. "I honestly don't know if he does or not. He apologized at once, but that might just be because Ms. Riesling started saying too much, not because he thinks I'm innocent. Policemen are supposed to suspect everyone, after all. I wonder why Ms. Riesling dislikes me, though? I always got on well with her father."

"So did I. I don't think we've even met her before today."

"No, we didn't." Lillet shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe it's because I wouldn't leave them alone with you, or because we're both women, or even because I was made Mage Consul while her father, with many more years as a Royal Magician, was passed over. It could be almost anything."

"Do you think it will be a problem?"

"I don't know, little love. If the Watch believes that I might be guilty, we could end up tripping over each other while trying to solve the crime, and let the murderer get away." She didn't want to worry Amoretta, so she didn't mention another point that had occurred to her. If the murderer did keep killing, and Lillet remained under suspicion, how long would it take the whispers to turn ugly? Magicians were still by no means fully trusted by the people, and those who were neutral to her at Court could easily turn against her with enough prodding.

Lillet pushed the breakfast dishes away.

"Come on, Amoretta. Let's go."

"All right. I just need to write a message for the theater, first."

-X X X-

"What does she mean, she isn't going to sing Coralia?" Marcelo Terne, music director of the City Theater Opera Company, exploded, his dark eyes flashing furiously.

"Just what I said," replied Brendan Saint, manager of the company and the theater alike. Unlike the tall, long-limbed Terne, who looked the artist's part with his saturnine good looks and long, curling dark hair that brushed the nape of his neck, Saint was short, stocky, and had neatly clipped sandy hair and a pointed moustache. He waved the note. "Miss Virgine says that she will be unable to perform her scheduled role of Coralia in tonight's opening of _Goldenlake_."

"But this is impossible!" Terne cried. "You said yourself that we are sold out! We have rehearsed for weeks. How can this be? What are we supposed to do for a cast?"

The answer to that was self-evident and everyone in the room knew it. Maria Bacardi uncurled herself languidly from her reclining position on the office sofa. Only twenty-three, she was a sensual, curvaceous beauty with masses of flowing dark hair and pale blue eyes, weapons she knew well how to employ to her best advantage.

"Have you forgotten so soon that it was I who sang Coralia two years past, the last time we performed _Goldenlake_?"

Of course they hadn't; that was why Saint had summoned her along with Terne.

"After all," she purred, "is that not the role of an understudy? To step in when needed when the star cannot go on?"

Saint wondered momentarily if La Bacardi knew something of the reasons for Amoretta's sudden absence. He'd been curious why a woman who had been _prima donna_ at the City Theater for seventeen months was willing with relatively little protest to play second fiddle to a new star instead of headlining at some other company. The City Theater was the best in the capital, but twenty-five years in the opera business told Saint that ninety-nine out of a hundred aspiring divas would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. Now, maybe he had his answer.

"Obviously La Bacardi can sing the part," he said. "Aste Nestor can then sing Wren in her place."

Terne threw up his hands.

"It is impossible, I tell you! Miss Nestor is second-rate at best. As Miss Bacardi's understudy she doesn't do any damage, but you know that she only holds the-I mean-" He broke off into a stammer, unable to complete the thought.

La Bacardi smiled lazily at Terne's discomfiture.

"We're all adults here, Maestro. She's Count de Marassou's mistress, and he is an influential patron." She gestured airily. "In a company with less scrupulous managers, she would have been given Wren's role from the first and that would have been that."

Terne stamped the ferrule of his silver-capped cane against the floorboards.

"It is not acceptable!" he barked. "It is opening night and our supporting cast is worthy of...of some provincial touring company."

"Blame the Virgin, not us," La Bacardi said, shrugging. The epithet Pops used was also employed derisively by Amoretta's backstage rivals on account of her name and lack of formal training.

"There may be good reason behind her withdrawal," Saint pointed out. He opened the letter and read, "She says, 'I fear that to continue may put lives at risk,' after all."

"Rubbish!" Terne declared. "The artistic temperament, taken from the exacting to the merely absurd."

Saint chuckled softly.

"For you to complain about artistic temperament, Marcelo, is...amusing. And I dare say you would not dismiss the idea out of hand if you had an Inspector of the Watch waking you at half past one."

"The Watch?"

"Quite. Inspector Ballatore had all kinds of interesting questions about our Miss Virgine's recent roles, to say nothing of her home address and that of her manager.:

Both of the others stared at him openly.

"So whatever it is that Miss Virgine fears, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. The better questions to ask are, what does her performing or not performing have to do with the Watch and saving lives, and what does it mean for this company?"

Neither the music director nor the soprano, it seemed, had any answers to offer.

-X X X-

Even by daylight the alley was a squalid place, caught between gray stone buildings that reared high above the cobbles. This was the old section of the city, once the home of noble families in medieval times but now reduced to shops and tenements of the working poor. It was only three blocks away from the City Theater, Lillet noticed; since many of the capital's artistic institutions had a long history they had remained while mere aristocracy and money had moved on to better things. That had led to many actors, performers, and artists taking rooms in the area, informally called the Theater District.

The marks of violence had been removed, the bodies taken down, the blood scrubbed away from walls and pavement, but an almost tangible air of menace hung in the air. The atmosphere of murder and brutality clung to the place, scarring it despite the clean-up.

"Or maybe it's just me," Lillet said aloud, looking around. "Maybe it's just because I knew something horrible happened here that I think of it as an evil place."

"No," Amoretta told her, shuddering. "It...it's not just you. There's something wrong here."

Amoretta was much more sensitive to such things than Lillet or indeed any human was. The angel inside her was an existence of pure spirit and, even though bound in flesh, retained shadows of its higher senses, particularly where sorcery and the diabolic were concerned.

"Let's see if I can learn precisely what," Lillet said. She set down the black leather satchel she carried and popped the latches. From inside she took a heavy book bound in flaking brown leather with fittings of an odd blue-tinted metal.

"Is that a new grimoire? I don't think I've seen it before."

"It's a Purgatory variant," Lillet said. "I don't use it much but I've had it in the library for about two months."

Amoretta frowned thoughtfully, then nodded.

"Oh, yes; it usually sits on the second shelf in the third case."

"Worried you were losing that perfect memory?" Lillet teased.

"My memory isn't _perfect_ , Lillet. I didn't recognize the book at all out of context."

Lillet giggled.

"I think that proves my point rather than refutes it."

Amoretta responded with a shy little smile, letting Lillet know that she'd been trying to lighten the Mage Consul's spirits. Lillet smiled back, then began to flip through the grimoire. She'd marked the page for easy reference, so it was the work of a moment to find the spell and refresh her memory. She cast the basic Purgatory Rune, then enhanced it with more mana, further empowering it so that it gleamed with ghostly blue flame.

 _So far, so good._ The problem was that the Rune was only part of the spell, not a complete replacement for it-a stepping-stone from which an old-style ritual spun off. She took a vial of powdered quartz and a thin, sharp dagger from her bag. With the crushed gems, she outlined a spiraling pattern around the Rune, then pricked her left index finger with the dagger, drawing blood. She let two droplets fall into the center of the Rune, then brushed a tear from her eye and let that fall as well. Symbolized by life and pain, Lillet called the dead.

A cold, bitter wind seemed to flow through the alley. The Rune's fire surged, then flowed up to take on a humanoid shape. The wraith glared balefully at her, but Lillet was too experienced a necromancer to be scared of her own familiars.

"Show me," she ordered it. "Show me what magic was done here."

 _I obey_ , echoed coldly in her mind. In the next instant, her vision rippled and Lillet saw not the cobblestones and high walls, but the pulse and flow of magical energies. Riesling had probably used a very basic spell to learn what she had, but Lillet's summoned wraith was a powerful spirit and as a creature of pure will more attuned to the flow of magical energies than a human magician could be, more capable of unwinding the flow of the distortion left behind. The knowledge it offered was incomplete, but more than enough for Lillet to understand what had been done. With a shudder she dismissed the wraith, then the Rune. Amoretta touched her arm gently.

"Did it work?"

Lillet nodded.

"I know what was happening here...well, sort of. Whomever did this turned murder into ritual-basically, human sacrifice."

Amoretta let out a little gasp.

"But how can that be? Inspector Ballatore said that the murder was done to imitate the end of the opera."

"I know, and I can't deny that, but...there are definitely traces of a ritual spell lingering here."

Of the four kinds of magic, each had its own dangers. Glamour dealt with the spirits of nature, a pure elemental power that had its own agenda, its own will, and which inherently belonged to the world and so could not be bound fully but only bargained with. Alchemy dealt with the manipulation of the laws of creation and a mistake could produce a disaster by setting those forces loose, out of control. Necromancy touched upon the eternal mysteries of death and the soul and the careless magician could end up blurring the lines between the two worlds to devastating effect.

Sorcery, though, was the riskiest of all. On the one hand, it presented the greatest power-at least a certain kind of power. Devils recognized no limitations other than the extent of their own strength; they were eager to flout God's authority on a moral or a tangible basis. Responsible sorcery, the kind Lillet used, worked by binding lesser imps and demons, forcing them into obedience. But there were devils who could not be bound, only summoned. They would bargain for lives and souls, tempting their summoners into sin. It was this kind of magic, devil-worship and the Black Mass and the like, that had given rise to the kind of witch-burning bigotry that decent magicians and complete innocents alike had faced for centuries.

That was the kind of magic that someone had invoked in the alley, magic that did not command devils but which served them.

"I'm not exactly an expert at this kind of thing, but it's almost like...like the symbolism of the killings were tied to the symbolism of the spell, like the one was standing in for the other. But that doesn't make sense. The point of this kind of ritual is to summon or to empower a devil, but the murders aren't _about_ a devil. Devils are evil, but they're not _insane_. There's something going on here that I don't understand."

"Lillet..."

"There's something else, too. Part of the sorcery here wasn't just the ritual. There were familiars as well. That confirms what the Inspector was worried about, how one person could carry out a murder like this. Whomever it was really did have extra hands to help out."

Which meant that somewhere out there was at least one practicing sorcerer with unknown powers who had chosen to focus his madness on Amoretta.

As they walked back to their carriage, Lillet felt as if hidden eyes were watching them, lurking in every shadow.


	6. Chapter Five

"Please hold your chin up just a bit higher...yes, that's it." Gaylord Calvert's charcoal stick moved smoothly over the page, sketching out Maria Bacardi's face. The singer wore her costume as Coralia, which the wardrobe mistress was still frantically trying to adjust.

"Will this take much longer?" she asked pettishly.

"Not much," Calvert said. "I only wish you didn't have to cancel your sitting."

"I had assumed that I would have plenty of free time today, but I was wrong."

The wardrobe mistress nudged La Bacardi's arm up so she could make an adjustment.

"No, no, put your arm back down!" Calvert said at once. The singer yanked her arm out of the older woman's grip.

"Ah! By all that's holy, go _away_ , you stupid cow!" she snapped. "Must you insist on doing everything at once? Go bother someone else."

"I'm sorry, Miss Bacardi, but I have to-"

"Didn't you hear me? _Go!_ "

The wardrobe mistress scuttled away as if driven by the lash of the singer's voice.

"That should make things easier," Calvert said.

La Bacardi tossed her head, letting the jet black curls tumble down like a lion's mane around her head.

"She should learn to have some consideration for others instead of always putting herself first. Doesn't she realize that I have better things to do besides rearrange my life for her convenience?" Though that particular ode to selfishness was genuinely meant, she at least possessed the wit to recognize the irony of saying it to Calvert under the circumstances. "Oh! Don't think that I do not appreciate that you are changing your own schedule for me."

"No, no, I'm doing your work on commission," Calvert said. "When art comes from the soul, that's one thing, but I'm painting this portrait for you, so naturally I shall do my best to adjust."

"Ah, then you understand completely. When I am given a small part, I must fulfill it to the best of my ability, but no more. It is work-I am a professional. But tonight, as Coralia, I shall be given a chance to shine, to truly create a work of beauty in my song."

"I'd noticed that you weren't dressed for Wren. I'd thought the handbills had announced Miss Virgine as Coralia."

La Bacardi laughed harshly.

"The Virgin, it seems, has acquired a case of maidenly shyness. She will not perform, she says! The little coward."

Calvert added a few touches to the sketch.

"Coward? What is she afraid of?"

The diva gave an airy little gesture.

"Who can say? Mr. Saint said only that she will not perform. Maestro Terne was fit to burst. The little vixen has him completely under her spell, but Mr. Saint knows better. He has a hard head for business, and won't be tricked by a put-on of innocence. La, I daresay it's the only decent piece of acting she's ever done. I admit, her voice is fine, but opera is more than mere _singing_. One must perform, must capture the audience in the world of the story. Only then can one be a true artist."

The beautiful soprano smiled, and there was a world of wickedness in it.

"I do not believe Mr. Saint has asked you to do any posters of her yet for advertisement?"

Calvert shook his head.

"No; I'm a bit surprised. I'd have thought that he'd want to talk her up as much as possible since she didn't have your reputation to bring in the crowds."

"Perhaps he suspected even then what the outcome would be, hm? Why waste time and money on someone who comes and goes in an eyeblink? For after tonight, Mr. Calvert, we shall never hear another word of that little ingenue."

-X X X-

"Why did you want to come here, Lillet?" Amoretta asked as they walked through the arched double doors.

"I need to do some research, and the Royal House of Magic has the second-best magic library I know."

"Who has the best, Professor Gammel?"

Lillet nodded.

"The Silver Star Tower has every grimoire and occult reference that the Archmage collected, plus everything Professor Gammel and Lujei owned when they moved in, and then whatever the Professor added since he founded the Magic Academy. Unfortunately, it's also halfway across the kingdom."

She looked around the library, which occupied three levels of an octagonal turret. It wasn't a large room in terms of floor space, so the Royal Magicians had removed floors and built upwards instead. There were a series of wrought-iron catwalks and gantries linked by thin spiral staircases, so that the tower looked like it was filled with steel lacework. Narrow stained-glass windows interrupted the rows of shelves at irregular intervals, done up in brilliant yellows and golds. From the outside of the tower, though, there were _no_ windows; each had been built up against the stonework of the wall rather than piercing it. The light behind them came day and night courtesy of magic and kept the library well-illuminated at all hours without the need for lamps that could spark a fire.

"So why did you bring me along?"

"Well, you can help with the research-"

Amoretta shook her head.

"I don't have the background knowledge you have, so I'd be little use for anything but fetching the books."

"I know, but...the real reason is that I don't...I don't want you out of my sight while there's a murderer out there with an eye on your performance."

"Did it bother you to admit it?"

"Well, I don't..." Lillet began uncomfortably, then concluded, "I just don't want to be unreasonable, dragging you around at my whim and interfering with your life just because I'm scared."

Amoretta giggled into her hand.

"Oh, Lillet, you know how much I want to be with you. I'm glad of any excuse for it-and here you are worrying!"

Lillet blushed, feeling silly.

"You're right, of course...I just don't like making _demands_ of you, even if it's for your safety. I hate the idea of forcing my will on you, like you were a servant or a...a familiar."

"You're silly, but very sweet." Amoretta hooked her arm through Lillet's so they could stand side-by-side, shoulders and hips touching. "But I do feel safe being with you."

The assurance made Lillet feel warm inside, though with a creeping serpent of fear at the back of her mind as she recalled the danger.

One of the good things about the Royal Magic Library was that it had been catalogued and indexed, unlike so many private collections. Books were referenced in a large card file so that new cards could be introduced when needed. A series of five cabinets contained the index, ornamented with emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz, and diamond stones to indicate their subject: glamour, necromancy, sorcery, alchemy, and non-field-specific topics respectively. Lillet opened the ruby-marked cabinet and started looking through the Rs.

It was quite possible that Lillet herself was the greatest living human authority on the use of Rune-based sorcery. Certainly this was true within the kingdom; her tutor on the subject at the Silver Star Tower had been the devil Advocat. She'd held the legendary grimoire of Solomon, the Lemegeton, in her own hands and had used one of its runes to call the devil Grimlet. She'd learned the hard way that merely summoning an entity of such overwhelming power did not necessarily bind it to service; as one of the greatest of Hell's lords Grimlet had rejected utterly her attempts to master him. Luckily, trickery had succeeded where force had failed and she'd left him bound in Hell for millennia to come.

That was all Rune magic, though. In sorcery especially, the clean elegance of Runes had replaced acts that were sometimes disgusting and often genuinely vile.

"What is it you're looking for?"

"Well, if this was done by old-fashioned ritual magic, then the magician would need equipment, reagents, and assorted paraphernalia. I thought if I could figure out what kind of ritual was done, then the Inspector might be able to trace the killer through the objects. I'm sure that the Watch has plenty of experience in tracing smugglers and black-market goods. Vessels of human bone and candles rendered from baby fat and that kind of thing just can't be had at stores."

Amoretta shuddered.

"Candles rendered...Lillet, that's _horrible_."

Lillet nodded.

"I know. Mr. Advocat told me about that one when he was teaching me some of the advanced work in the Hell Gate grimoire. They were used in the ritual of demon-summoning that was replaced by the Rune."

"Why would he tell you that?"

"I was nervous about dealing with devils and he was showing me how the bad reputation of sorcery was based on how, in the past, sorcerers had to do evil things just to summon familiars, but we don't have to do that any more."

"That's sophistry, Lillet. Dealing with devils isn't any less wrong just because you don't have to commit other, separate sins just to start the process."

"I know; we are talking about Mr. Advocat, after all. But it makes a difference if a magician can summon imps and dragons and so on and keep them under control, as opposed to offering them what _they_ want in some kind of bargain." She glanced thoughtfully at Amoretta. "You know, you do have a point. With Rune magic, it's easy to get in deep any only realize that you've crossed a line when it's too late. With ritual sorcery, you'd have to be either evil or crazy to even start."

"That's what we're dealing with now, though. Someone who is both evil and insane."

-X X X-

Maria Bacardi's voice rang out, lustrous and brilliant. She was, undeniably, a superb talent, but her voice lacked the angelic purity of Amoretta's. Moreover, Saint and Terne had selected _Goldenlake_ not only for its musical qualities but because Coralia was an ingenue's role, one where the singer had to portray youth and innocence. It fit Amoretta perfectly, helping to cover her acting deficiencies by allowing her to essentially play herself, while allowing her voice to shine. Despite La Bacardi's dreams of a return to glory in the eyes of the audience-and in the reviews in the morning broadsheets-the comparison was not a favorable one for her.

In the view of one critic, though, it was so much more than "unfavorable."

 _Hatred_.

"How _dare_ she?" the Closing-Night Crow muttered aloud as he stormed from the theater. A single act had been all he could stand, and even that only because he wished to avoid a spectacle so he'd waited until the first intermission to leave.

 _Need_.

It was impossible for him to see the slightest merit in the performance. His soul cried out for Amoretta, had anticipated her, craved even the little bit of her he could possess in a few hours on the stage. Now his skin crawled with the lack of her, hyper-sensitized flesh twitching as if tiny insects were swarming across his body beneath his clothing.

Why was it? The Watch? They'd been asking questions-an Inspector Ballatore had been going around, waking people up the night before. Did the Crow finally have an understanding audience? Someone who saw his own performances for what they were?

 _Interference_.

They could _try_. Let them! They would not stand between him and what he wanted.

"We will have her," he murmured.

_We must..._

"...show them..."

_...the cost of opposing us!_

He wrung his hands together as he walked, tearing at his theater program like a predatory bird rending a piece of meat.


	7. Chapter Six

The high iron gate marking the entrance to Mage Consul Blan's estate loomed threateningly over Constable Allen. A ruddy light illuminated the area, cast by the flames burning in the mouths and eyes of the stone beast-heads capping the gateposts. It might have just been a fancy lantern, the kind of thing any aristocrat on Argentine Way might have, except that they'd been dark as Allen's cab had approached, only coming alight as the watchman came across the street.

_Magic._

Allen didn't care what the law and even some of the priests were saying about magic just being another area of human knowledge. It frightened him down to his boots, ghosts and devils and whatnot. Ordinarily he'd have chewed nails rather than be sent to fetch the kingdom's chief witch.

Tonight was different, though. No matter how much dealing with magicians bothered him, he was sure it was a more comfortable experience than looking at whatever Inspector Ballatore had gone out to see. To Allen's way of thinking, every minute he was at _this_ job was one less minute he had to spend at the crime scene.

By the beasts' flames, Allen could see a brass knob set in one of the gateposts. He pulled it. A moment later, a servant in predominantly green livery approached the gate. He took in Allen's uniform with a quick glance.

"What's your business here, Watchman?"

"I've been sent by Inspector Ballatore to see Mage Consul Blan."

"All right. Stay on the path as you go up to the house."

Some nobles protected their estates with man-traps or spring-loaded crossbows. Allen had a feeling whatever Lillet Blan used to keep out thieves would be considerably more effective. Even though the path was a broad road, wide enough for two carriages to pass side-by-side, he still stepped gingerly as he walked up to the house.

Allen's uniform and the Inspector's name won him admittance at the door as it had at the gate. He was shown to wait in a front parlor that wasn't in the least creepy or magical, but elegantly and tastefully furnished, or at least he imagined it so.

He wasn't kept waiting long before a young blonde-almost a girl, as she couldn't be more than a year or two over twenty-came in to greet him.

"You have a message from the Inspector, Watchman?"

"Mage Consul Blan?" Allen asked hesitantly. It was hard to believe someone this young could be such a powerful magician.

"Yes."

"The Inspector says there's been another murder." He swallowed nervously. "He'd like you and Miss Virgine to come to the crime scene, to assist us."

"Another murder? But it's not closing night! Amoretta didn't even sing!"

"I don't know about that. The report came in to the Old Quarter Watchhouse. The Inspector was going to investigate, but he sent me to bring you, if you were willing to come."

"We'll go, of course. I'll have my carriage brought around."

"I have a cab waiting, Mage Consul."

Lillet shook her head.

"You can pay him off. My carriage will be much more comfortable, and a crested coach will clear the way and save the time we'll lose in hitching it up. Where are we going?"

"The City Theater, ma'am. Apparently the body was found outside the stage door."

-X X X-

Quite a crowd had gathered around the side alley by the City Theater, from well-dressed upper- and middle-class theatergoers to the denizens of the district. A row of watchmen formed a barricade across the mouth of the alley, holding back the press of the worried and the morbidly concerned. Cries and shouts rang out, and rumors buzzed through the crowd like the mad thoughts of a diseased mind.

Lillet and Amoretta followed as Constable Allen pushed his way through the mass of spectators. Shouts and cries went up as Amoretta was recognized by many of those familiar with the theater, and Lillet by a few. There were surges against the constables; the crowd seemed like it was one massive organism made of many parts. There was anger, too, anger at the criminal who had committed the act but also anger being directed at the Watch who were supposed to protect the city from violence.

Lillet didn't like it. That the crime had been committed here, at one of the capital's major social institutions, was bad, because it struck hard at people's illusions. The sheer foulness of the act, if it was anything like the others Ballatore had described, only made it worse. It was that sense of violation that turned people's minds towards wrongness and hate. There was a real danger of a riot.

Deciding that action was necessary, she reached up and brushed back her hair, then rubbed her thumb across the pearl drop in her right ear. Even at her level of mastery, casting Runes and summoning familiars took time, and in an emergency she didn't always have that kind of time. Lillet used an old magician's trick to prepare for that by summoning familiars and binding them to an object in advance, so that with a simple expenditure of mana they could instantly be called forth.

Lillet's ear-drop bound a Morning Star, a powerful nature spirit whose summoning was a mark of a master of glamour. It appeared in the shape of a beautiful woman with a body of translucent blue light, cradling a blazing orb between her palms. At Lillet's command it hurled the starchild once, then a second time into the air over the crowd to detonate harmlessly but spectacularly with bright flashes and loud booms. Lillet cried out at once into the stunned silence.

"All of you, go _home_! The Watch is here and trying to investigate, but they can't do anything if you don't disperse and let them do their jobs! The killer isn't here, so a mob isn't going to do you any good!"

"They won't do anything!" someone shouted. "The law doesn't care about people like us!" No doubt a political agitator, the kind who always seemed to show up to turn any unrest to their own advantage.

"It most certainly does!" she shot back. "If Inspector Ballatore didn't care about keeping you safe he wouldn't have hauled _me_ out of bed to come help out, would he? I'd say that means he cares quite a lot!"

That didn't mean much to the opera crowd, but to the locals it was a telling point. Most of the time when they saw aristocrats it was because they were slumming among the arty crowd, or as customers for some disreputable pleasure.

"Now go away; we'd like to try and solve this crime."

Lillet spun on her heel and walked past the line of watchmen and down towards the building. She left the Morning Star behind, just in case someone decided to get creative or stupid, but it seemed she'd done the trick. A mob was kind of like a herd of animals and about half as smart; the key was to get them under control and following your lead before the stampede began.

Come to think of it, her father the farmer wouldn't have been a bad politician, at that.

Amoretta and Constable Allen fell in beside her as they walked up the alley, which was almost broad enough to be a side street in its own right. Ballatore, who could hardly have missed the fracas at the alley mouth, had come up a good thirty feet to meet them.

"I brought them, sir," Allen greeted his superior.

"I see. Thank you for coming, Mage Consul, Miss Virgine."

"No, thank you," Lillet said. "If this monster is after Amoretta in any way, then I appreciate you letting me work with you at every step."

"It's not a matter of courtesy, but a matter of information. I need to know what you can tell me."

"Constable Allen said that there'd been another killing?"

"Yeah, it's back up there. One of Miss Bacardi's more persistent suitors all but tripped over the crime scene when he went around to see if he could bribe his way backstage."

"Are you sure it's the same killer?" Lillet asked. "It's not a closing night; Amoretta didn't even sing!"

A shadow seemed to pass across Ballatore's face.

"Oh, yeah. It's the same." He sighed and cast a look up the alley to where the crowd was thinning out. "It's going to be all over the broadsheets tomorrow. The first three crimes are all the talk through the Old Quarter already but murder in the slums doesn't raise eyebrows down your way no matter how horrible."

"That's not-" Lillet protested at once, then admitted the truth. "Actually, you're probably right. I've met too many people that figure that's only to be expected from the poor, or simply don't care if it doesn't affect their corner of the world."

"Yeah, well, a mutilation killing on the doorstep of the capital's biggest entertainment venue is going to impact their corner of the world hard. Tomorrow's broadsheets are going to set off a firestorm, and we're no closer to an answer than we were after the first murder. We've spent all day questioning and cross-questioning everybody connected with the theater, from staff to performers to crew to recent part-timers like carpenters and artists and plumbers and no one remembers anything or can point to anything suspicious. There isn't even anyone who's been mysteriously absent that might point to an opportunity. Well, except her, today." He nodded at Amoretta, then took a second look at her. "Miss Virgine, are you all right?"

Lillet glanced at Amoretta, then realized with a sudden stab of fear that she was trembling, and that her eyes were flicking from side to side as if she was trying to catch sight of something that flitted at the edge of her vision.

"Amoretta, what is it?" Lillet yelped.

"I...it's just...the feeling here is so strong."

"What feeling?"

"Of devils and sorcery. I first felt it almost as soon as we were getting out of the cab. It started to get a little better once we got past the line of constables, but...the further we get up this alley, the worse it gets."

"What's she talking about?" Ballatore asked.

Lillet slipped her arms around Amoretta, hoping that being held would help calm her. She started to stroke Amoretta's hair before answering.

"Amoretta is sensitive to the presence of the diabolic, whether it's an actual devil or the presence of active or recent magic. She felt it today when we visited last night's crime scene."

"Sensitive? You mean, because she's a homunculus?"

Lillet's head snapped up and whirled to face Ballatore almost of its own volition.

"How did you-oh, Ms. Riesling must have told you." She wasn't happy about it and her tone reflected the fact.

"I didn't realize it was a secret."

"It's not, but we don't advertise it, either. There are plenty of bigots who'd want her off the stage or worse because she's not human." She glanced meaningfully at Allen, who was giving Amoretta a look of, though not hate, at least wide-eyed disbelief and shock.

Ballatore followed her gaze and had the good grace to say, "I see. I'll be more discreet in the future. So, she can sense the presence of-wait a second. Miss Virgine, did you say that you felt whatever it is you feel when you were pushing through the crowd, but that it got _better_ when you got into the alley?"

"That's right."

"Bloody _hell_ ," Ballatore swore loudly, making everyone jump.

"What is it, sir?" Allen asked.

Lillet understood.

"Is it possible, Amoretta? Was the sorcerer one of those people in the crowd?"

"It could be. There was something strange about it. Usually sorcery itself isn't distinctive, not even among different types of Runes. And even minor devils don't really stand out from others of their type, except as greater or lesser expressions of power."

Lillet wasn't quite certain she understood, and supposed it was the problem of trying to explain color to a person who had been blind since birth.

"What's strange about what you feel today?"

"It's like Mr. Advocat."

"Mr. Advocat? But how could _he_ be involved?"

"No, not him." Lillet was surprised at how relieved she was to hear that. While she in no way _trusted_ him, she genuinely liked and got on well with the devil teacher. "It's like him, though."

"I'm sorry, Amoretta; I don't quite understand."

"Mr. Advocat is such a strong devil that his presence, even his magic, have their own individual force about them. This is like that; the sorcery has its own...I guess you could call it a scent, though it has nothing to do with the smell. I felt the same scent in the crowd as I do now."

"What about earlier?"

Amoretta shook her head.

"If you mean at the other crime scene, then no. It had been too long, and the subtle differences fade faster than the overall impressions do."

"But he or she _was_ here just now?" Ballatore quizzed.

"I'm not sure. That would explain it, but there are other possibilities as well. If there had been some other spell performed out in the street, perhaps. For example, if the sorcerer had summoned his or her minions there at the alley mouth, then sent them in here to commit murder, that would explain it."

"Minions?"

"Devil familiars, imps and demons," Lillet explained. "That's how the killer can physically overwhelm the victims. These murders are sorcery, but they also use sorcery."

"How do you know that?" Ballatore said dubiously.

"That's what I was checking on when I visited the scene of last night's murder." She summarized her findings for the Inspector, who seemed intrigued but not convinced.

"That's a lot more detail than Janice gave, with a considerably fresher look at things." His eyes flicked to Amoretta, suggesting that he'd been listening when she'd talked about how magical traces faded rapidly over time.

There was a straightforward answer to that question, but as she always seemed to, Lillet had to make an effort to say it, which gave Amoretta a chance to say it first.

"Lillet is a better magician than Ms. Riesling."

Ballatore gave Amoretta a long look, but made no sign of what he was thinking.

"All right, then," he finally said. "Let's see if she can make something of this mess that we couldn't."


	8. Chapter Seven

"Inspector, do you mean that the body is still there, just as it was found?" Lillet asked.

"That's right. Everything's just as the first watchman on site found it."

She looked down at Amoretta.

"You don't have to see this if you don't want to, little love."

"Actually, I'd like her opinion on this. Whatever messages the killer is leaving, they're personal to Miss Virgine. If they mean anything to anyone, they would to her."

"Inspector, you're not going to make Amoretta look over all the gruesome details of a torture killing." _What on earth is he thinking? She's not a professional police officer, used to mucking about in blood and violence._

"Lillet." The homunculus's cool fingers covered the hand that still rested on her shoulder.

"Amoretta?"

"It's all right. I know you just want to protect me, but this is something I want to do."

"You're sure?"

Amoretta nodded.

"Yes. This person has to be stopped. Some unpleasantness is a small price for that."

Lillet sighed. She didn't like watching Amoretta suffer, even in the smallest way, but it wasn't Lillet's choice to make.

"All right. Inspector?"

Ballatore took them down the alley to a spot directly opposite the stage door. This time the killer had apparently taken no chances that the body's discovery might be delayed. The watchmen they passed had drawn, pale faces that the flickering light made seem like exaggerated fetish-masks of anger or of shock.

Janice Riesling was waiting already, her dress and long cloak making her seem almost a threatening harbinger, a birdlike figure of ill omen. Lillet barely gave her a glance, though, as the obscene spectacle demanded her complete attention as soon as she saw it.

There was only a single corpse, but it was horrific enough. It was suspended by the wrists by what looked like horseshoes that had been driven into the brickwork of the wall by tremendous force. Her mouth was an open rictus and the lower portion of her face smeared over with blood. By contrast, the gaping rip clawed in her throat had not bled so freely. She had blond hair and wore a cheap lavender dress, not that of a prostitute but perhaps a shopgirl.

"Her tongue was ripped out," Ballatore said grimly. "She was forced to drown on the blood-there's bruises on her face from where her mouth was covered and head tipped back-and her throat torn out later, after she'd been dead a while. I'm guessing she wasn't killed here because of that; someone would have stumbled across the crime during the time it took her blood to settle."

A shudder passed through Lillet and she clutched at Amoretta's hand as much for her own support as for her love's. She'd faced death before, but had never been face-to-face with this kind of deliberate cruelty and violation done for its own sake.

Ballatore took a lantern from one of his men and turned it on the wall, first on one side of the body then the other. As he'd described about the previous night's crime, there were messages written in blood. To the left of the body was written, "For if the golden throat be stilled," and to its right, "Let all tongues fall to darkness and silence" as if they were parallel lines in a couplet.

"Do you recognize the lyrics, Miss Virgine?" Ballatore asked.

"No, I don't," Amoretta said in a small voice.

"You're sure? It isn't from some song you performed before coming to the City Theater? Or a tune or poem you like personally, even if you've never sung it in public?"

She shook her head.

"No, I'm sure that I've never seen or heard these words before."

"That's probably the literal truth," Riesling said. "Alchemy familiars don't have memories like humans do, but an exact record of what they observe."

 _Familiar!_ Lillet's temper flared up. How could anyone talk about Amoretta that way? Ballatore didn't give her the chance to make an issue out of it, though.

"Damn it. I had Mr. Saint and Maestro Terne take a look at it, since they were conveniently here, but they said it had nothing to do with tonight's performance or any other opera they know. I'd hoped it was something personal to you, Miss Virgine, but since it's not..." He scowled, pursing his lips as if he wanted to spit. "Devil take it, this breaks pattern! Just when I thought these killings made some twisted kind of sense...and I refuse to believe that there are _two_ mutilation murderers using sorcery at work in the theater district at the same time!"

"I don't understand it either. Amoretta didn't even perform-" Lillet broke off suddenly, the words sticking in her throat. She forced herself to look at the scene again, at the girl's wounds and the couplet. "'For if the golden throat be stilled'...Oh, my God."

She looked at the Inspector and saw understanding in his eyes.

"She didn't perform," he said.

"That's why it isn't from an opera," Lillet continued. "Those were Amoretta's performances, adapted into diabolic sacrifices. This adapts what happens if she _doesn't_ perform."

"The tongue and larynx removed so the victim can't speak, the couplet about silence..." Ballatore said, nodding. "It all fits." He glanced at Amoretta for a second. "I think our killer wants her to get back on stage. That's why the body was put here, open and obvious, so there'd be no mistake in finding the message."

"Then this is because I didn't sing tonight?" Amoretta put it into words.

"I...think it is," Lillet said.

"Why _didn't_ you go on tonight?" Ballatore asked. "Neither Mr. Saint nor the Maestro could understand it. They said you just sent them a note saying you wouldn't sing tonight, without any explanation."

"This is why," Amoretta said, nodding at the corpse. "The killer was taking inspiration from my performances, so I thought I needed to stop giving him that inspiration."

"And instead this happens. Looks like he's not willing to surrender his muse so easily."

"I guessed wrong. I never thought that he'd react like this."

" _We_ guessed wrong," Lillet said, shouldering some of the blame. "I went along with it, even agreed with you."

"You can never tell what the insane will do," Ballatore said. "They have their own logic, but understanding it before the fact is no easy task."

"Particularly if a devil's influence is making things worse," Lillet pointed out.

"If I go back on the stage, I'll be giving the killer what he wants. It should stop more demonstrations like this, but what if it turns out to be worse?"

Somewhere along the way, they'd all seemed to reach a tacit agreement that the killer was "he," rather than "her" or "they." Lillet wondered if any of them could even articulate why.

"If we don't catch him, he'll get everything he wants sooner or later. The real question is, now that he's broken pattern, will he go back to killing only on closing nights, or will he do something else right away?"

"You're the expert, Mage Consul," Ballatore said. "You tell me."

"I don't _know_. Amoretta and I spent the afternoon researching what the ultimate end of this might be, but we don't have any hard answers. Of all the forms of traditional, pre-Rune magic, sorcery is the least understood. Alchemy is scientific and precise by its nature and the kind of glamour practiced by hedge-wizards and village wisewomen was passed on by organized tradition, but ritual sorcery was the province of people who were evil, insane, or both. There isn't really an organized scholarship, more of a collection of journals and manuscripts-rarely even proper grimoires-by the practitioners and books by Church authorities on how to identify and fight it, which half the time got the details wrong or confused sorcery with other types of magic."

"So in all, you've learned nothing," Riesling said, seeming almost smug about it. _Maybe she's just defensive,_ Lillet thought. _Her job is to give magical assistance to the Watch, so it can't be easy to have me march in and do what she can't_. Even so, though, in the face of the kind of horror that was before them, it seemed absurdly petty to pursue a personal squabble.

"Yes," she admitted, "only vague hints and suggestions of what might be happening, but nothing that would provide useful evidence. I did learn one thing, though."

"Which is?"

"I was bothered because the crimes obviously relate to Amoretta, to her roles in the performances."

"That's clear enough," agreed Ballatore.

"Well, that sounds like a human being, an obsessed madman. No devil thinks like that. One might take pleasure in pain and suffering, even torture, but not in this particular _way_ , do you see? If a devil was obsessed with Amoretta, it would act more directly-at the very least it wouldn't have taken three crimes and your official attention to bring the news of the murders to her. It would have made sure she knew."

"That seems clear enough. We knew that all along."

"No, but there's more. These murders, or at least the one last night, weren't just committed _using_ sorcery; they _are_ sorcery. When those poor girls were killed according to the end of _The Crimson Key_ , it was a human sacrifice according to ritual sorcery."

This was apparently too much for Riesling to accept.

"Are you delusional? How on earth could killing women according to...to an opera scene somehow have magical power? With or without Runes, any kind of magic involves very specific acts which manipulate supernatural energies in precise ways. You cannot tell me that _this_ "-she waved a hand at the corpse mounted to the wall-"is magically significant!"

"That's my point, Ms. Riesling," Lillet said. Even if the older woman couldn't bring herself to be polite, Lillet could be, if only to show some respect for the dead and for Amoretta's plight. "That shouldn't be possible unless a _new_ ritual is being created which incorporates the insane symbolism of these murders into the effect."

"But that's just not possible! Even when new magic is 'created,' it's not really being made. We just discover new ways to use the laws by which magic works and think up new combinations in which to use them. The laws themselves don't change any more than they did when...when humans discovered fire or the wheel or the mathematical concept of zero!"

Lillet nodded.

"I know. That's why I was so confused! But then I realized what could explain it. The objects we've been talking about are related to human magic, but they wouldn't apply in one circumstance."

Riesling stared at her as if she'd grown a second head.

"They wouldn't apply? What are you talking about?"

"The limits of human magic wouldn't control someone who wasn't human."

It was Ballatore who followed her point, despite his lack of magical talent. Perhaps it was his deductive experience.

"You mean a devil," he said. "Is that why you said what you did about how devils don't think this way, Mage Consul?"

Lillet beamed.

"Exactly, Inspector. It's a devil's power, but a human will." Her smile vanished and she smiled heavily. "I only wish that I could understand the point of it all, but in one way or another there are two people involved: a human sorcerer and a devil. What's more..."

"Lillet, what is it?" She hadn't even told Amoretta this part yet. In point of fact, she hadn't really articulated it in her own mind.

"Yes, don't keep us in suspense," Riesling said dryly.

"Well, it's only this. If a devil is responsible, then it has to be one which is capable of major acts of power. It's not some demon or succubus or grimalkin like which might be summoned through ordinary sorcery. This is at least a greater devil, capable of making these killings into a pact of blood sacrifice between itself and the sorcerer. What Amoretta's felt here tonight only confirms that. So not only does the sorcerer have enough power to summon up something that strong-"

"Could _you_ do it?" Riesling suddenly challenged.

"With the right Rune, certainly. The problem is that even with that kind of Rune, _summoning_ a spirit of that power is one thing, but _binding_ it as a familiar is another matter. The Archmage Calvaros summoned Grimlet, but could only master it with the aid of the Philosopher's Stone, and even then his soul was still forfeit once their transaction was complete and the Archmage no longer had the Stone."

Lillet sighed again.

"Anyway, that's assuming I had a functional rune, which at that level of power would have to be unique to the devil in question. The problem is that without Runes, ritual sorcerers weren't very reliable in the binding side of their magic. Even a magician of sufficient power might not be able to bind a summoned devil because they didn't have the right magic to do it with. Instead, magicians would make pacts with those devils to bargain for their service."

She couldn't entirely repress a shudder at that, because she was all too familiar with the concept. When she'd been at the Silver Star Tower she had done it herself, freely signed the contract in blood and felt the icy grip of another's hold on her soul...twice. Lillet had been deceiving the devils, had escaped one contract when time unwound, negating the contract while leaving her with the benefit of the bargain, and escaping the second by tricking Grimlet into breaking the contract himself. They were risks she'd had to take to save Amoretta, her friends, and her teachers from Grimlet and the Archmage's spirit, but regardless of how successfully she'd planned it and carried it off, she knew the true cost of such an act in a way others could not.

"Wait a minute," Ballatore interjected. "If I'm following what you're saying, there's a devil out there who's at best bound to do the bidding of a madman and more likely is virtually free to commit whatever horrors it likes?"

Lillet nodded.

"I don't know the reasons, but what's happening here is that these murders and the sorcerer's obsession with Amoretta are being used by that devil, merged as ritual elements of sorcery. That means we're not just fighting to save future victims, but to keep that ritual from finishing."

"So what happens then?"

"I can't know that-but if this is the kind of thing that makes up the journey," she added with a wave towards the corpse, "do you really want to see the destination?" Lillet glanced at Amoretta, and felt a stab of fear as she contemplated what that ending might be.


	9. Chapter Eight

The rain began shortly before sunrise, so that the steel-gray dawnlight was turned to the duller shade of glowering clouds. There was no wind to speak of, and the steady, monotonous fall of water showed every sign that it would continue throughout the day.

"I wish we didn't have to be apart today," Amoretta told Lillet wistfully as she was helped up into their carriage.

"I know," Lillet agreed. "I don't like being apart from you anyway, but with a mad sorcerer on the loose I hate not having you under my eye where I can protect you." She looked Amoretta directly in the eyes. "Are you sure that you'll be all right?"

"It frightens me," Amoretta admitted. "The idea that there's some devil out there, watching me, maybe even right now, is terrifying." The carriage started in motion, the horses' hooves scraping against the gravel walk. "It might be anyone at the theater: a musician, part of the stage crew, one of the staff, and I wouldn't know it unless I came face-to-face with him. Or he might be a bird pecking at a window or a rat scuttling along the beams over the stage."

She shuddered, making Lillet instinctively reach out to embrace her.

"Don't worry, little love," she said, holding her close. "I promise you, I will never let you die. No devil will ever take you from me."

Amoretta sighed, laying her cheek against Lillet's.

"It's so strange, how you can say something like that and make me believe it in the depths of my soul."

"I'm glad that you do, because I mean every word of it." She leaned back, breaking the embrace, and cupped Amoretta's face between her palms. "I may not be a homunculus, needing love like you do, but you still mean everything to me." Lillet leaned forward and captured Amoretta's lips in a warm, passionate kiss, feeling the cool softness of her lover's mouth as she repeated her pledge in actions rather than words. Amoretta met her passion, sliding her fingers through Lillet's hair and cupping the back of the magician's head so she could deepen and prolong the kiss. Heat rose in Lillet and in that moment she wanted nothing more than to pull Amoretta atop her on the velvet-cushioned seat and demonstrate her feelings emphatically. It was with regret that they ended the kiss.

"Inspector Ballatore will have a couple of his watchmen at the theater today to keep an eye on things. I know they wouldn't be of much use against devils, but if you think you see the sorcerer himself, then let them know." Lillet frowned slightly, thinking. "You'd know if he was there, wouldn't you?"

"If he was in my immediate presence, I would, but not if he was more than twenty or thirty feet away." She blushed a bit and added, "This sense of mine isn't even as long-range as a human's sense of smell."

"Well, if you do notice him there, don't let on if you can," Lillet warned. "Don't provoke him to rash actions, but let the watchmen know. Better yet...send one of them for me at once if anything happens."

Amoretta smiled as if she would laugh.

"Oh, Lillet, don't fuss so." Her smile seemed to dispel some of the fear that had gathered in the carriage while Amoretta was running down all of the possible forms a threat might take.

"I'm only concerned for you. If I could, I'd lock you away behind a wall of dragons and Charon until we catch this fiend."

"But we can't do that. We saw last night what would happen if you do that, and neither one of us is willing to put others in the way of horrible death to keep me safe from a threat that's not even immediate."

That wasn't quite accurate, Lillet thought. She and Amoretta were certainly willing to risk their _own_ lives, but Lillet would have been willing to gleefully let the rest of the world go to the devil if it meant saving Amoretta-only, Amoretta herself would not have tolerated it and so it wouldn't have been "saving" her at all. So perhaps Amoretta had been right after all in the end.

"So you'll rejoin the company and give the monster what he wants, for now, in the hope it makes him return to a slower course of action, while I try to help the Watch to trace him. If those killings really are just steps towards completing some ritual sorcery, then the best way to defeat it is to stop it now, before he finishes." She smiled back at her lover. "In your operas, the villain always completes his final ritual so that there can be an epic battle, but I'd rather not do things that way."

"I agree!"

"I just hope we'll be able to turn up a lead. The Inspector is going to be helping, of course, but forcing our way into the sort of black market that would sell to sorcerers won't be easy. That kind of person has a lot to lose-possibly even their life if they're convicted of practicing black magic. But like I said at the library, it's our best chance to find someone who can identify the killer."

She reached into the pocket of her purple dress and took out a thin silver ring.

"I made this last night, for you." She gave it to Amoretta. "It's for if you need to contact me in a hurry. I bound a fairy to it; if you rub the ring between thumb and forefinger three times it will summon the fairy and since I'm technically its summoner it will be able to travel directly to me with any message. It'd be a lot faster than sending one of Ballatore's watchmen."

Amoretta slipped the ring onto her finger.

"Thank you, Lillet. I promise I'll use it right away if I think there's a problem."

"No, thank _you_. I'll feel better knowing that you have that." She smiled again and said, "It's not a dragon, but I'll do what I can." Unfortunately, while she could bind a summoned familiar to an object in case of emergencies when there wasn't enough time to cast a Rune, she couldn't make one obey the orders of a third person. A free-willed elf or fairy was the only kind there was any point in giving to Amoretta, but as a messenger it would do its work well.

Amoretta leaned forward and kissed her again.

"I only wish that I could repay you somehow. Your love is my reason to live, and you've protected me so many times. It scarcely seems fair."

Lillet shook her head.

"That isn't how it works. We each do what we can for each other, and if that means I protect you when you're in danger, then that's what it means. You can't think I _resent_ that...do you?"

"No, not resent...but it seems unjust."

"It isn't. I admit, if you recklessly threw yourself into situations you couldn't handle, knowing I'd be there, it would be different, but you don't do that. Indeed, the last time it was _my_ fault, since you were threatened because you're my lover."

The carriage slowed to a stop. With some surprise, Lillet realized that they'd already arrived at the City Theater, indeed that they had drawn down the side street nearly to the stage door. Glancing out the window, she saw no sign of the bloody tableau that had been on display the previous night. In the cleanup, at least, the Watch had been efficient, removing the corpse and scouring the wall clean. Only with difficulty could she spot the places where the horseshoes had been sunk into the brickwork.

"Well, we're here."

"Mm-hm."

Lillet squeezed Amoretta's hand.

"Take care."

"I will. You take care, too."

The anxiety over leaving Amoretta alone that had bothered Lillet all morning built to a fever pitch, then.

"I'll be back to pick you up after the performance, all right?"

Amoretta smiled.

"I'd like that."

Slowly, reluctantly, Lillet released her grip. She watched as Amoretta descended from the carriage, went to the stage door, knocked, and was admitted. She was actually trembling when the door closed again as if sealing her lover inside.

_Stop it!_ she told herself forcefully. _You're no good at all to her like this!_ The night before, face to face with the latest horror, she'd been able to function calmly in her usual style, so why was she so affected now? Some kind of delayed reaction? Or just the fact that this was the first time since Ballatore's visit the previous morning that Amoretta had been out of her presence, beyond the circle of her _personal_ protection?

_If I really want to protect her,_ she reminded herself, _it has to be through action. Worry just gets in the way._ That was better. Resolve. She had work to do.

Lillet tapped on the roof of the carriage and the coachman flipped open the small, hinged trap-door.

"Take me to the Old Quarter Watchhouse, please."

-X X X-

"Extra! Torture killer stalks theater district! Bloody murder outside City Theater!"

Inspector Ballatore slammed the window shut, despite the stifling atmosphere in his little office. The newshawks were shouting it from every corner, all the city's broadsheets leading with the story of the latest killing. More than one reporter had made the link to earlier murders, whether by good journalism or because some constable-from ego, flattery, or money-had talked. The _Star_ , though, was the only broadsheet with a hawker right across the street from the watchhouse, and it wasn't by accident. Pinot, the _Star_ 's publisher, had it in for the Watch, considering a professional police to be an inherent tool of oppression by the Crown, and missed no opportunity to rub their noses in their failures.

Were this an ordinary crime, the press reports would have had him fuming, but under the circumstances Ballatore had a lot more to worry about than bad publicity. Somehow when compared to the thought of a greater devil on the loose in the capital the choleric ranting of the Prefect simply did not overly scare him.

He reached for the tin mug of strong, black coffee on his desk and knocked back the dregs. Sleep had consisted of two hours' fitful rest in his office chair and he had a feeling it wouldn't get much better until the case was over.

He could still hear the newshawk shouting, but the rain clattering off the closed window largely drowned it out.

"I can't believe you're accepting her help, Raoul."

Riesling was glaring at him, arms crossed below her breasts.

"For God's sake, she's our best suspect!"

"Why would the most powerful magician in the city have to play around with ritual sorcery?"

"You only have _her_ word for it that ritual sorcery is involved!"

"Don't forget Miss Virgine."

"A familiar would say whatever its master told it to."

"You don't believe that any more than I do."

"Why, because of how Blan acted when confronted by the body last night?"

"Partly."

"Partly? What's the rest of it?"

"The rest of it-and it's something I should have thought of yesterday, and if I hadn't been up all night I probably would have-is that if Lillet Blan wanted to commit a series of sacrificial murders, she could do it in that fortress she calls a home and we'd never find out about it. And if she has some crazy obsession with Amoretta Virgine, she has the girl herself to carry it out on. As you pointed out, a familiar is completely in her master's power."

"That's not proof. It could just be some bloody tribute to her lover's singing."

"And last night?"

"Done for our benefit, to make it look like there's an outside party reacting to Miss Virgine's actions."

Ballatore dropped into his chair; it creaked beneath him.

"Janice, we've worked together many times before, successfully, and I consider you a friend, so I'm asking that you take this as a legitimate question and not as an insult. Do you have any reason beyond the fact she's a sexual deviant to suspect Mage Consul Blan of being a homicidal lunatic?"

The question came out as a sigh, reflecting how damned tired he was, but he kept his eyes directly on her, watching how she reacted. She stiffened at once, initially offended despite his admittedly weak disclaimer. Her mouth opened to snap back an angry retort, but the force of his gaze-and, he hoped, her innate honesty-made her break it off a couple of words in.

"Of course I-"

Her mouth closed, and he could tell she was genuinely thinking it over.

"No," she said at last, "I don't. Nothing that's evidence. No, even that's not fair; I don't even have anything that counts as instinct. Not even a 'gut feeling,' as you'd put it. I just don't like her."

Ballatore nodded.

"That's what I thought. What my instincts do tell me is that she's telling the truth, and that she's got good reason to because she doesn't want anything to happen to Miss Virgine." He could have gone one step further and pointed out that to his eye, the two of them acted like a couple in love, not a master and servant, but he didn't want to start that argument. Besides, as he understood it, that could all be part of the fantasy, Blan's feelings on the one side and compelled responses from the homunculus on the other. Nor was any of it his problem anyway, so long as it didn't interfere with finding the killer.

"You're probably right."

"Which is why I'm accepting her help. It gives us access to magical resources we wouldn't ordinarily have, both in terms of knowledge and sheer power, and being Mage Consul means she can also swing the Palace onto _our_ side. It's better to have us working with us for the mutual good than going off on her own while complaining about our inefficiency." He showed his teeth in an ironic grin. "Have you noticed that the Prefect _hasn't_ come storming in here to rake me over the coals for the press reports? He won't want to step on Blan's toes and pick a fight at Court."

"Well, I'm glad I'm good for something," the Mage Consul said as she walked into the room. "But I'm glad that you've dismissed me as a suspect."

"You knew?"

Lillet looked at Riesling.

"I'd have to be an innocent or a fool not to. But thanks to a thin door, I now know you've come to the correct conclusion."

Ballatore hoped that she hadn't gotten there early enough to hear the phrase "sexual deviant." Luckily, she didn't show any sign that she had, though that could just have been discretion.

"So now that that's out of the way, where do we begin?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "last time" Lillet mentions protecting Amoretta is, of course, from my story "Life in a Bottle." Nothing like a blatant plug for my own work!


	10. Chapter Nine

"Ah, beautiful, Miss Virgine, simply beautiful," rhapsodized Maestro Terne when the last strains had died away. The meadow song in the second act was Coralia's most famous aria not only for its beauty but for its technical difficulty. _Goldenlake_ was not commonly performed on account of it, as the majority of sopranos with sufficient skill to master the song were too mature to be convincing in the role of the naive waif.

As always, Amoretta had sung to perfection.

"Indeed, if we were an oratorio company, we would be quite prepared," Maria Bacardi said waspishly. Terne flashed her a look, then shrugged his shoulders expressively.

"Ah, well, there is a point there. Remember, you are a young maiden in the throes of first love. You have been overcome by joy! Your world is sunlight and rainbows! You are light on your feet, swept along by your emotions! But no, when you sing it you are too controlled, too restrained in your actions. You must seem to be carried away by passion, by love!"

This was Amoretta's greatest flaw as an opera singer. She knew it was true, not just because Terne exhorted her to improve it at every rehearsal or because the critics declared it to be so, but from her own knowledge. She always _sang_ perfectly, not just because she never forgot a note or dropped a line, but because on an instinctive level she knew how to imbue a lyric or melody with the kind of emotional content it was supposed to evoke. When it came to acting, though, she just couldn't seem to do it. She could understand the goal of a scene, but not how to express it with gestures, movements, facial expressions, and posture. The end result was that it appeared she was just going through the motions, obeying the stage directions like an automaton even while the most exquisite music emerged effortlessly from her mouth.

It frustrated Amoretta immensely, because while opera was more about the music than the physical performance a great artist included both to completely draw in the audience. She worked hard at it, but could not seem to conquer her flaws.

Lillet had speculated that her dual nature had something to do with it. After all, she'd only had a body for a handful of years and that through alchemy, not nature. On the other hand, if one accepted the idea of heavenly choirs and the like, she might well have been singing since before the planet had been created.

_It would certainly explain the difference in my skill levels._

"I'll try harder, Maestro."

"You must, Miss Virgine. Your voice is exquisite, perfection-you could be one of the legends of the stage if only..." He yanked at his flowing hair in frustration and stamped his walking-stick on the floor. "If only you could match that voice with equal...with even _adequate_ acting!"

Amoretta bowed her head.

"I am sorry."

Terne waved his hand, dismissing the apology.

"I do not want your sorrow. I want improvement! Now, we try this again." He pointed the tip of his stick at the orchestra. "From the second scene, Coralia's entrance. Miss Virgine, remember: you are not singing a song, but are a maiden in the first blush of her first true love. You seek to explain how you feel to your friend." He nodded to Bacardi, who had returned to the role of Wren. Amoretta admired the woman's talents; her voice wasn't as good as Amoretta's but she was quite capable of cloaking her vanity and pettiness in whatever character she played.

Amoretta nodded to the Maestro. _At least this is a feeling I understand_. She though of the way she'd felt when Lillet had offered her her love that very first time. "Transported," as Maestro Terne had put it, scarcely began to describe the feeling. She thought of Elie's line the murderer had quoted, "My heart is hollow." It described perfectly the way she'd felt for the first hundred and six days of her life. Empty and unfulfilled without love, an artificial thing not even part of God's creation but cobbled together by human will alone, without even the love of her creator. Lillet was more than her beloved; she was quite literally Amoretta's reason for living. How had she felt to be offered that? Amazed, exultant, swept away indeed! It was beyond that, almost as if she'd been granted a miracle.

That feeling had never really gone away, even though years had passed.

As she raised her voice in song, she tried her best to show that feeling to those watching the rehearsal. Even as she did, though, Amoretta could not help thinking of what Lillet was doing, and hoping that she found success.

-X X X-

Charles Danae quivered under the gaze of Inspector Ballatore. He licked his lips nervously, his eyes flickering away to Riesling and to Lillet as if hoping that either witch would offer him respite. He found no help there; Riesling was impassive, and Lillet... She was actually smiling, and Danae had been working the gray markets long enough to know that kind of smile wasn't the least bit kind or helpful.

"Listen to me, Danae. Listen to me very closely. You and I both know that the only reason your shop hasn't been raided a half-dozen times this year is because you keep the right palms greased, be it in the Watch, the City Warden's office, whatever. That keeps the petty complaints off your doorstep for the smuggling and the contraband we both know run through here every day."

"I'm just an ordinary importer, Inspector; nothing wrong with that. You've got no call to-"

Ballatore didn't even bother to acknowledge that he'd spoken, but pushed right on.

"This is different than a few cases of port without their import stamps or foreign antiquities where the ink isn't dry on their provenance. This is black magic we're talking about-and it's a Palace matter now, so your friends aren't going to get between you and the stake."

"Black magic?" Danae yelped.

Ballatore reached over and picked up the copy of the _Gazette_ that sat on Danae's desk. The language wasn't so inflammatory as the _Star_ 's, but the facts no less so.

"I see you're familiar with the matter." He dropped it back on the desk. Danae's eyes followed it, seeing the headline that looked back up at Ballatore.

"The theater killings? You think I'm involved in _that_?"

"I think that the killer had to obtain certain paraphernalia for his crimes. Crumbling old grimoires or suppressed publications. Sacrificial knives of strange metals." He glanced at Lillet, who offered additional suggestions.

"Powders from mummified bodies? Poisonous or hallucinogenic compounds? Bits and pieces of corpses from rifled graves? Candles rendered from human fat? The blood of an aborted child? The-"

"God, enough!" Danae exclaimed. "What do you think I am? I'm a respectable citizen! You can't accuse me of...of _this_!" He slapped his palm down on the broadsheet.

"He's not accusing you of that," Lillet said. "He's suggesting that a merchant might close his eyes to the nature of what he sells, not knowing the final result until it's too late, and he realizes that he hasn't been selling black-market goods to gullible fools and eccentrics but participating as an accessory to murder and illegal sorcery and will probably get his choice of hanging or being burned at the stake unless he decides to start cooperating immediately with the authorities."

"But I didn't have anything to do with this! How can I give you information I don't have?"

"The question is, how long is the Palace going to tolerate having devils murdering people in the streets?" Ballatore snapped. "Quick, decisive action will be ordered and carried out-and who knows what evidence of other crimes may be discovered in the course of such action?"

Danae sagged back in his chair.

"I tell you, goods like that don't pass through my shop."

"Whose shop, then?"

"What do you-?"

"Don't kid me, Danae. You know all the nooks and crannies in this quarter and do business in most of them."

"Damn it, Inspector, I resent-"

"Mage Consul, how long would it take to get a royal writ to authorize me to search this place?"

"For evidence of trafficking in unhallowed arcana? Exactly as long as it takes me to write it." Lillet gave Deane that smile again. "I'll have to be nice to the Chamberlain later, but my office does have full ministerial powers when dealing with magical matters."

"All right!" Deane shouted. "All right; you win. What do you want from me?"

"Names," Ballatore said. "Names and addresses."

Danae reached for his quill.

-X X X-

"You were right," Lillet told the Inspector outside the importer's. "He did know everyone." The list contained over thirty names, including smugglers, fences, resurrection men, back-alley "physicians," and purveyors of doubtful herbs. Some of them Ballatore or Riesling were familiar with from their work, while others even they hadn't suspected or known.

"Danae walks a fine line between being the most crooked of legitimate importers and the most honest of black marketeers, and he's got a finger in half the business of the Old Quarter. There's been no hard evidence against him-imagine that-and since his dealings are purely on a buy-sell basis instead of dealing in extortion, gambling, theft, or murder he's never been enough of a top priority to justify breaking down his protection."

"I see." Lillet was no amateur at politics, but the complexities of the way the city's underworld functioned were new to her. She looked at the list again. "There's no way we can cover all those in a day."

Neither of them asked her why she'd specified a day. The next nightfall might mean nothing, or it might mean another orgy of blood. Or it might be the time the sorcerer decided to stop playing games and to try directly for Amoretta.

Lillet tried not to think about that.

"We'll split up," Ballatore decided. He dug into his uniform pocket and took out a small clasp-knife. He folded Deane's list in half and slit it neatly along the fold, then gave the bottom half to Lillet.

"You take those; Janice and I will take these." Riesling gave him a surprised look- _don't know why he trusts me to investigate alone, maybe?-_ but said nothing.

"Can you send a constable along with me?" Lillet asked. "Sometimes the uniform might be useful in symbolizing authority, and proving I am who I say to people who have good reason to be suspicious."

Ballatore nodded.

"Good idea."

"We'll meet back at the Watchhouse when we're done, or at eight, whichever comes first," she suggested.

"That's reasonable; we can compare notes."

"It's not just that. I need to get to the City Theater; Amoretta's singing tonight and I promised I'd see her safely home."

-X X X-

Danae's stomach was churning.

He looked down at the broadsheet again. **BLOODY KILLER IN THEATER DISTRICT!** the headline screamed at him. In his business he was no stranger to violence and brutality. Lessons had to be taught and all too often the only way to teach them was to make an example. He was genuinely surprised to find that he could still be genuinely disturbed and outraged by something.

Outrage and revulsion, though, were nothing compared to selfish fear. The noose, the stake-these were what concerned him. Danae had been driven by the fear of them to provide an accurate list to the Inspector, though the thought that some of his competitors were on that list gave him a few moments of pleasure.

The problem was, the list was genuine. It had to be, to keep the Inspector from believing himself deceived and carrying out his threats. But there was a chance that one of those people possessed actual information about the murdering sorcerer. That could lead to the crime being solved, and the murderer taken alive into custody.

And a living man might talk.

_Besides_ , Deane told himself, _he might not even be the killer. Surely there's more than one person buying sorcerous paraphernalia in the capital!_ And murderer or not, he could definitely implicate Deane in dealing in contraband.

The importer looked at the broadsheet again.

Self-interest won out.

Deane took up the quill again, and wrote a quick message. It was short and to the point. The Watch had been there in company with Mage Consul Blan, they were investigating the purchase of items useful in ritual sorcery, and that his recipient had better look out for himself. He sealed the note, then rang for one of the shop-boys.

"Here; deliver this letter, and be quick about it."


	11. Chapter Ten

"Take a look for yourself, Inspector Ballatore, if you can't take my word for it."

The stench of the river, the fetid smell of stagnant, polluted water, seemed to not only permeate Jacques Merlot's shack but the man himself. Merlot was allegedly a boatman for hire, more commonly a river scavenger who, vulturelike, combed the water for valuables that might be cast adrift-and according to Danae, when business was bad on the water he'd come ashore to do his scavenging in the graveyards. Body snatchers-"resurrection men"-typically did their work on behalf of medical students rather than sorcerers, but the grisly trade was not one to encourage finer sensibilities in its practice.

"Go on, why don't you!" Merlot insisted, thrusting his calloused hand towards the open shack door.

"Thank you; we will."

The door swung into the house with the hinges on the left; Ballatore nudged Riesling with his shoulder to precede him into the shack on his right side. He was a half-step behind her and, even as she stepped in, he suddenly drove himself hard against the door. There was a yelp of pain as the door crashed into the man hiding behind it.

"Filthy pig!" Merlot cursed even as his brother Paul staggered out from his hiding place, shovel in hand.

Ballatore whirled to face the doorway, keeping both boatmen in sight while he drew his sword. The standard blade of a Watchman was a short saber not unlike a sailor's cutlass, well-suited for close-quarters combat in cramped conditions like Ballatore now found himself in. Riesling had moved into the shack behind him.

"The next time you try to ambush someone," the Inspector said casually, as if in complete control of the situation, "don't try it on someone who knows there are two of you-and don't hide behind a door with gaps between the boards your victim can see through."

As for why they'd ambushed him, that had been obvious the instant he'd stepped through the door. The object of the brothers' work the previous night was still lying, half-wrapped in sacking, in the middle of the floor. The law tended to look askance at freshly dug-up corpses.

Paul Merlot shook his head, clearing the cobwebs from the Inspector's charge, and raised his shovel for another attack. His brother had produced a long, thin knife and was blocking the exit. Neither seemed impressed by Ballatore's saber, and utterly ignored the unarmed Riesling.

Paul swung the shovel in a massive overhand blow like an axe. Trying to parry would just snap off Ballatore's sword-blade, so instead he ducked left and let the shovel's edge rebound off the bare wood floor from which it carved a gouge. It would have been the perfect chance for an easy counterattack, but the Inspector had to pass it up to block a knife thrust from Jacques.

That was the tone the fight took. Both boatmen were experienced brawlers and street-fighters, and while neither individually would have been a match for Ballatore together they kept him too busy fending them off to get in a solid hit in return. It was touch-and-go, and whether they'd have worn him down or whether he'd have been able to take advantage of a clumsy mistake to turn things in his favor was an open question. Thankfully, though, it was a question he didn't have to answer.

Riesling hadn't pitched into the physical fight, but while Ballatore kept the Merlot brothers at bay she was free to use her magic. The Hades Gate was her best Rune and she used it quickly, completing it in under a minute. In another couple of minutes she could have strengthened the Rune and called up phantoms, ghostly knights who made effective shock troops, but the Inspector needed faster help than that, so she instead summoned a ghost. The dancing blue flame cast its eerie light through the dingy hut but the boatmen didn't slow their attack, figuring the best chance to deal with magic was to push on and kill the magician.

The ghost was not capable of inflicting physical injury without her using more magic to strengthen it, but circumstances had provided her with a better option. Riesling pointed at the corpse on the floor, and the ghost rushed to it, its flame pouring through nostrils and mouth. A moment later its eyes seemed to blaze up with ghost-light, and the zombie pushed itself erect, tearing free from the sacking.

"Protect Inspector Ballatore!" Riesling ordered, her own will communicating to her familiar which man was which. The animated corpse lurched towards the men and struck a great, clubbing blow at Paul Merlot, knocking him back into the doorjamb. Jacques stared in wide-eyed shock; the sudden horror broke his concentration in the middle of a knife-thrust, but his momentum kept him going and he ran himself onto the point of Ballatore's saber, which had been held low in readiness to parry. He made a wet, gurgling sound as his guts were pierced through, and then the Inspector pushed him away so that he slid off the blade and crumpled to the floor.

Screaming, Paul swung his makeshift weapon at the approaching zombie. The sight of a corpse he'd stolen risen up to fight him had driven the boatman into a fit of terror, and he struck with manic strength. The edge of the shovel bit into the zombie's shoulder, half-severing the arm so that it hung limply, but the undead creature did not flinch. Instead, its other hand clawed at Merlot's throat, seizing it in a fierce grip, and smashed the back of the man's head against the doorjamb. Riesling dismissed the animating ghost at once, but it was too late; the dead man slumped to the floor beneath the corpse of his killer and the scraping of his head against the wood left a long trail of red down to the door.

"I'm sorry," Riesling said contritely. "It's hard to order low-level undead to fight to capture. They just aren't capable of the finesse. I should have called it off faster."

Ballatore shook his head.

"You didn't do any worse than I did. I _am_ supposedly capable of that finesse and I didn't manage to keep Jacques from ramming himself onto my saber. Besides, it's more likely than not you just saved my life, and I'm not such an altruist as to pick them over me." He cleaned the saber and rammed it back into its sheath. "Is there any chance you can get anything from the spirits?"

"I might get one back, but I doubt if I can compel any complex answers from him." Riesling sighed and glared at the bodies. " _She_ could do it, I'm sure."

"Janice," he chided.

"No, I wasn't just being frustrated; I meant it. She probably could summon up a specific person's spirit to question them. Father told me that she published a paper about modifying necromantic Runes to summon a specific ghost, and only about four of the Royal Magicians could even follow it."

"Then I can only hope that Mage Consul Blan is having a better time of it than we are."

-X X X-

"Another dead end," Lillet sighed miserably. Water dripped off the brim of her steeple hat, a testament to the steady rainfall that had kept up all day long. "This has all been a waste of time."

"I wouldn't say that, ma'am," pointed out her companion. Constable of the Watch Jaymes Bartlett was a big man with a frank, open face who put Lillet in mind of a large-breed puppy. "After all, we have managed to arrest two fences and a trader in smuggled goods. Without your authority as a Court minister the Watch wouldn't have had the grounds to search their premises."

Lillet shook her head.

"That's all well and good, Watchman, but we're trying to find out something about the Theater District killer, not clean up members of the petty criminal underworld."

"Well, what about that medium, then, ma'am? Wasn't he a sorcerer?"

"Him? Oh, no. He practiced some very minor ritual necromancy and a lot of charlatan's tricks."

Bartlett scratched his head.

"Then why did you put the fear of God into him, if you don't mind me asking, ma'am?"

"As Mage Consul, I'm not just Her Majesty's personal advisor on magical matters, but the head of magical affairs in the kingdom. Tricksters like that just drag down all magicians by spreading superstitious nonsense among the common people. It's like you Watchmen. Yes, you represent power and the law, but your uniform is supposed to mean justice and protection, not fear. If one of you takes bribes or extorts money then it makes it harder for all of you."

Bartlett nodded slowly, then bobbed his head a couple more times faster, as the point sank in.

"Ah! I see what you mean, ma'am."

"Good. Well, let's get going; there's plenty of names left on the list." She started towards the carriage, but was halted by someone calling her name and booted feet splashing through puddles.

"Lillet Blan! Mage Consul!"

She and Bartlett both turned to see a man rushing towards them. He was relatively young, no more than thirty, with dull gold hair worn in tight ringlets falling past his collar like the artistically fashionable set did at Court. His coat, waistcoat, and striped breeches were of good quality but faded and worn, though the seals and fobs on his watch-chain were kept polished to a high gloss and the topaz stickpin in his cravat, its stone the same color as his hair, was a nice antique piece.

"Please...Please wait, Mage Consul!"

He raced up to them, muddy water splattering, then hunched over gasping for breath when he arrived, bracing himself on a walking stick that was obviously used for fashion rather than necessity given his lack of any limp or sign of injury while running.

"What is it, sir?"

"I've...I've been looking all over for you," he wheezed.

"Looking for me?"

"Yes. The word's been...that you and the Watch...are asking questions around the Quarter." He paused, taking several more deep breaths, then drew himself more fully upright as he recovered his wind. "It's about sorcery, isn't it? The theater killer?"

Lillet made a sour face.

"News seems to travel fast."

"But that's just it!" the man exclaimed. He sucked in a couple of deep breaths, then straightened up, recovering himself. "I have information!"

"Information?"

Perhaps feeling that he hadn't made the best impression, the man attempted to provide a bit of background.

"My name is Gaylord Calvert," he said, fishing a card out of his pocket. "I'm an artist by trade."

"Calvert..." Lillet mused. "Any relation to Baron Calvert?"

The artist made a little face.

"A cousin only. Second cousin, once removed, to be exact, and from a quite junior branch of the family-but all to the better, for it is hard to listen to the call of Art from the chambers of a manor house. But that is strictly by way of introduction and has no bearing on my purpose."

Lillet nodded.

"So what is your purpose? What's this information?"

"I will explain. As an artist, I have to keep a roof over my head and bread on the table, so I do commercial work as well as my own chosen pieces. Specifically, I design posters and advertisements for the City Theater, which also brings me a certain amount of portrait work from the singers and other notables. I haven't had an opportunity to sketch or paint Miss Virgine yet, though I hope to; she'd make a wonderful subject with her ethereal beauty-" He stopped, flinging up one of his hands before Lillet could do so. "I know! I'm rambling; I'm afraid I'm prone to it when excited." He plunged a hand into a pocket and took out a silver flask, popped its top off with a movement of his thumb, and took a swift draft. Calvert replaced the cap, but before he did Lillet caught a hint of a sharper, more acrid scent than whiskey or brandy.

"Anyway, I mention this all because it explains how I was in a position to know of the Watch's investigation, of the questions they were asking even yesterday. You see, we are artists, and the 'artistic temperament' as people call it often leads us to new sensations and experiences which we can then express in our art. When I heard rumors of what _kind_ of questions were being asked I thought at once of something from six months ago."

"Six months?" It was the first piece of solid information that Calvert had given and yet it fit precisely with the time frame that they'd established for the series of murders.

Calvert's hand bobbed up and down.

"Yes, exactly. I didn't think anything of it; though it disturbed me at the time I set it aside in my mind...but now..."

"What _is_ it, Mr. Calvert?" Lillet urged. She wasn't usually an impatient person, but the threat to Amoretta wore at her, to say nothing of the rain.

"A musician friend of mind, one of the players in the opera's orchestra. He was seeking, he said, new inspiration for his music and he'd found it in rituals he'd learned from a manuscript." Calvert shuddered theatrically. "He wanted me to join him in one of the rituals, but the things he described sickened me."

Lillet made an immediate decision.

"Take us to him, now." She gestured at her carriage. "You can tell us the rest on the way."

Calvert nodded.

"At once, Mage Consul."

She turned to the carriage and stepped quickly towards it, the men falling in behind her. Suddenly, Bartlett yelped a warning, and Lillet turned to see the knob of Calvert's walking stick swinging down at her.

The blow never fell. Blue lightning exploded from Lillet's body, halting the weapon an inch from her skin and shattering it, chunks of wood flying in several directions. Calvert cried out in pain as the power of the ward surged into him along his arm. Lillet's protection against personal attack should have incapacitated him, more than likely knocked him unconscious.

Only it didn't.

Calvert convulsed, his flesh seeming to twist and writhe. The skin of the hand that had held the cane seemed to turn scaly and ribbed in a sickly yellow not unlike a bird's talon. As Lillet tried to react, reaching to summon a bound familiar, the unnatural hand shot out as if dragging Calvert's body behind it to seize her throat. The artist howled in pain as fire lashed him again, but he silenced it by slamming Lillet's head up against the side of the carriage. Her eyes rolled up in her skull and everything went dark.

Calvert grunted as Bartlett's truncheon fell heavily on his shoulder in a savage blow, but he spun and ripped the watchman open with the suddenly talon-like nails of his free hand. Lillet's coachman lashed at the artist with his long whip, but Calvert seized the leather thong and pulled the man down from his seat to land hard on the cobbles. Sparing neither downed man another second, he flung the unconscious magician into the carriage and slammed the door shut, then leapt up onto the box, seized up the reins, and sprung the horses. Wildly, the carriage plunged through the rain like a maddened beast, the blazing eyes of its driver casting his twisted face in unholy light.


	12. Chapter Eleven

Lillet was late.

The performance had gone beautifully. Despite-or perhaps _because of_ ; humans were perverse, sometimes-the grisly murder the night before, _Goldenlake_ had played to a packed house, with customers literally standing in the aisles to watch. Amoretta had tried her best on stage, knowing that the role was one well-suited to her limited skills and hoping that she could do it justice in more than just the music.

She'd been honestly pleased with how it had gone; Maestro Terne had been effusive in his praise and perhaps just as tellingly Maria Bacardi had been shooting her angry glances since the first act. Amoretta had hoped Lillet had finished her work soon enough to be able to watch at least some of the performance, but apparently she hadn't. That wasn't all that surprising, but when Lillet did not appear in the greenroom after the show, Amoretta started to worry.

When the crowds had gone, Amoretta had removed her stage makeup and changed out of her costume, and Lillet still hadn't appeared, worry crystallized into fear.

"Are you certain that you haven't seen Lillet or our coachman?" she asked Pops, the doorman.

"No, Miss Virgine, I haven't," he said with an indulgent smile. In his years on the door he'd seen many relationships come and go, many a doting lover cease to dote so carefully and probably also many a fit of temper at real or imagined slights. Of course, he didn't know that the killer who'd displayed a mutilated corpse outside his door had fixated on Amoretta and that Lillet's absence was more likely related to that than a lover's neglect.

More importantly, he didn't know Lillet.

 _Lillet's_ never _broken a promise to me, not once._ She wasn't perfect or saintly-they'd had disagreements and quarrels over the years, some over important things and some embarrassingly silly, but not once had either gone back on their word.

Lillet hadn't come to pick her up, though. It was made doubly worrying because she hadn't offered out of courtesy or because she wanted to spend extra time together, but because she was concerned for Amoretta's safety-indeed, had only agreed to be apart because they each had separate work to do.

No, if Lillet wasn't there Amoretta was sure it was because she couldn't be. Yet, if something had come up, some emergency in the investigation, why hadn't she sent a message? One of the watchmen could have brought it, or if she didn't want to commandeer a law officer as an errand boy Lillet might have sent a fairy or other familiar, or even hired a messenger the way an ordinary person without magic could have done.

Lillet wouldn't forget, Amoretta thought. She just wouldn't, knowing how Amoretta worried. The truth was, Amoretta disliked to spend even the few hours each day their jobs demanded apart from Lillet. If life had allowed it, she'd never have left her beloved's side, working or sleeping, for even a minute. Amoretta knew that in a human that kind of desire for closeness would have been...unhealthy...but she couldn't help it. Being away from Lillet caused pangs that almost rose to the level of physical pain if it went on long enough.

Amoretta didn't _want_ to be so clingy-she knew it wasn't natural for a human and she was afraid, sometimes, that she'd overwhelm Lillet with her neediness. But she couldn't change it. Her best supposition was that Lillet's love sustained her artificial existence in place of what God's love gave to creatures that were natural parts of creation-and while God was everywhere, in everything, Lillet was human and her presence restricted. Too long apart, and that coldness that she'd felt in that first hundred and six days of life began to steal back over her, the despair of the unloved.

 _She knows that, though!_ The thought was almost a scream in her mind. _Why wouldn't she send word?_

There was really only one conclusion possible. Lillet would never have been forgetful or failed to realize what Amoretta would feel, she just wouldn't. Therefore, if she was late and hadn't sent word it was because...she...

"Couldn't," she said the last word aloud, so softly as to not even be a whisper.

"What's that, miss?" Pops asked.

Amoretta shook her head.

"Nothing, Pops; I'm sorry to bother you."

She went to the stage door and opened it. Outside, one of the Inspector's watchmen was waiting.

"Excuse me, Constable?"

"Yes, Miss Virgine?"

"Could you send word to Inspector Ballatore? I'm certain that something has happened to Lillet; she's half an hour overdue and she's _never_ late. I'm going to go home and prepare, and then I'm going to go find her."

"If you say so, miss. I'll see the Inspector gets the message."

"Thank you."

She stepped back inside and turned to the doorman.

"Pops, could you please have a cab summoned for me?"

"Are you sure, Miss Virgine? If your Miss Blan comes by and finds you've left, she won't be happy."

Amoretta shook her head.

"That would be a relief, compared to what I fear."

-X X X-

_Pain._

Footsteps punctuated the surging throb in her skull, the sharp click of hard-soled boots off a plank floor. Lillet felt nausea rise, but with some effort managed to control the reaction: a gag had been jammed in her mouth and if her stomach rebelled she would be in danger of suffocating on her own vomit. She lay on her right side, her arms behind her and her legs drawn up and bent at the knee. A few attempts at movement soon told her that her wrists and ankles were tightly tied, even her hands swathed in some kind of cloth to keep her fingers from moving.

Someone was taking no chances that she'd be able to use any magic or even trigger one of her charms.

Slowly, trying to ignore the pain, Lillet opened her eyes.

She wasn't in a cell; that was something at least. The room looked to be a kind of studio or atelier, a large room which by its angled opposing walls was an attic just under the eaves of some building. The ceiling was bare beams and pierced only by a couple of small windows, the kind of thing which suggested the common construction of the Old Quarter.

The room's contents were more interesting to Lillet, and not in a good way. A long bench under the windows was set up as a kind of crude laboratory, with glass jars set out in rows, some stoppered. In the center of the room a symbol looked to have been chalked, some kind of magic circle for ritual sorcery, surrounded by half-burnt pillar candles. The rain was loud, drumming on the roof above and making Lillet's head ache with the percussion.

"This one is dangerous."

"No, no, don't you see? She's perfect!"

"She is a threat. You should kill her now."

"I can't kill her, not now. We need her. She'll be perfect for the final sacrifice."

It was Calvert. The artist was pacing up and down the room, carrying on a conversation with himself and yet not with himself. The one voice, pleading, cajoling was similar to how he'd spoken to Lillet in the street, but the other voice was quite different. It came from the same throat and tongue, but the sharp tone, the words snapped off precisely, the curt simplicity of the sentences were all different, as if a second person was taking turns speaking through Calvert's body.

More likely than not, that was the truth.

 _Possession_.

She'd seen it before, a devil come up from Hell in spirit alone rather than in body and needing a human form to occupy. It would suppress the mind of its host, take control of the body and express its power through it. It explained how Calvert had shrugged off Lillet's personal wards; no simple ward could match the power of a high-ranking devil.

Yet obviously the possession wasn't complete. Calvert's own will still had some influence.

"She's awake," the artist snapped. "This has gone on long enough." He stalked over to the workbench, pushed aside several items and picked up a hook-pointed skinning knife, still spattered with rusty stains of dried blood. Lillet felt her stomach knot in terror; despite all her power she was in a helpless position and she couldn't help but think what it would feel like to have the knife cutting away at her, peeling back her flesh.

Calvert took a couple of steps towards her, then suddenly convulsed, a twitching and shuddering running up and down his entire body. He flung the knife down on the worktable; it shattered a beaker and spilled out a noxious green powder.

"No!" he squealed. "No! We finish with this one!" The trembling subsided, and he turned to face Lillet directly. "You're her lover, you see. I didn't neglect that. Two nights ago we used a woman for Artur because of that. We end each role in blood sacrifice. Tonight, though, with you in our hands, we can finish it! You're a great magician, so I'm sure you can understand perfectly. _Symbolism_ will merge with _reality_. We enact the ending of Amoretta's greatest role, her life as your lover, but with the _real_ you in place of a substitute! I will not only _depict_ the truth, but _create_ it!"

He smiled beatifically.

"And then, Malphas will give her to me."

-X X X-

The first thing Ballatore thought when he saw Amoretta was that she was still wearing her costume from the opera; it was the only context he could place her outfit in. Her lower belly, hips, and thighs were enclosed in a close-fitting white garment like a child's short pants. Over it she wore a sleeveless black leather dress or coat, calf-length. Coat was probably the better term for it, for it was open down the full length of the front and only held together across Amoretta's bare chest by a series of cross-laced cords running from the rows of large, decorated silver buttons. Silver-gray sleeves of soft linen, slashed to reveal a good deal of the skin beneath, covered her arms without being attached to any other garment. Black leather boots came to just below her knee. Most importantly, a sword hung at her hip, the bright crimson of the sheath matching the color of the hilt and quillions exactly. There was an exotic, almost barbaric magnificence about her.

 _She is exotic, though. She's not human_ , he thought, and then the outfit seemed almost natural for her.

Her face lit up at the sight of them.

"You made it!" she exclaimed. "I'm glad; I was about to go looking for Lillet by myself. Do you know anything?"

"How did you know she was in trouble?" Ballatore answered with a question.

"She didn't send word that she'd be late."

"That's _all_?" Ballatore was momentarily incredulous, for if that was a reason to worry half the couples in the capital would be calling the Watch to find their mates after an extended shopping trip or a bistro night that ran long. Of course, the circumstances were different-and she was right, besides-but he still found it hard to imagine trust in a lover's courtesy being so absolute that a lapse would be grounds to assume as a _first_ reaction that she was in trouble.

If Lillet Blan treated her homunculus with the kind of consideration that justified that trust, then it challenged a few of the assumptions Ballatore held about their relationship.

"Isn't that enough?"

"Not for most people, but as it happens, you're right. She's been abducted."

Amoretta gasped.

"What happened?"

"Apparently, the man just approached her on the street. He talked to her for a bit to put her off-guard, then attacked her. Constable Bartlett tried to help and he was killed for his pains, gutted and left to bleed out in the street." He hadn't meant to say that; his rage at the butcher was getting the better of him. Getting himself back under control, he continued, "He flung your coachman down on the street, put Lillet in the carriage, and drove off."

"Is he all right?"

"The coachman, you mean? He has a broken shoulder, a concussion, and substantial bruising, but his life's in no danger. He gave us most of the details, including a description of the abductor and the name he gave: Gaylord Calvert."

"The artist?"

"You know him?"

"We've never met, but I've heard people talk about him at the theater. He does some of the advertising work. If I had met him, I would have sensed the sorcery on him."

Ballatore nodded.

"We went to his rooms, but he wasn't there, and there was no sign of the kind of ritual magic paraphernalia Mage Consul Blan's told us about, so he must have another location, possibly kept under an assumed name, for working magic. The carriage was found abandoned a few blocks away, but the streets are such a rat's warren in the Old Quarter that he might have taken her six blocks from there and ended up twenty feet as the crow flies from where he started. We're getting the handbills out and canvassing the neighborhood, but time could be of the essence."

If they ended up losing a high-ranking Palace minister it might mean disaster. Forget any thoughts of his own career; this was the kind of thing that could lead to a top-to-bottom reconsideration of the Watch itself. Agitators like Pinot would shout to the masses and factions at Court opposed to the Watch and its supporters would use it as a rallying point, to say nothing of the greater problem of the sorcerer being free to continue his deviltry.

"That's why we're here in person," Riesling said. "I know that you should be able to find the Mage Consul faster than we could. We have to use mundane methods, but you can use the bond between magician and familiar to track her down."

When they'd received Amoretta's message Ballatore had been going to send the watchman back to her with a note that amounted to "stay home and wait," until Riesling had told him about the magician-familiar link.

"That's exactly right, but how did you know?"

"We know you're a homunculus, remember?"

Amoretta tilted her head to one side in an air of curiosity as she looked at Riesling.

"I'm a homunculus, Ms. Riesling, but Lillet is not my creator."

Riesling gaped at her.

"How...how can that be possible?"

"Lillet loves me," she said matter-of-factly, without a hint of embarrassment or discomfort at discussing the topic with near-strangers. "My creator did not. Did you genuinely think that Lillet created me?"

"Who else would a familiar be with than her summoner or creator?"

"I am not a _familiar_ ," Amoretta said with a trace of offense, "and this doesn't matter anyway."

Ballatore found a couple of his assumptions about the Mage Consul shifting radically. The new picture of Lillet and Amoretta's relationship fell into place with surprising ease, though, because it meshed with how the two of them were together. The things that had jarred against their assumed master-familiar relationship instead made perfect sense for an as-good-as-married couple.

He glanced over at Riesling, whose expression suggested that she was still struggling with the whole idea. Probably, he concluded, it was a combination of being more involved personally, as a magician, and because she knew enough about homunculi to have preconceived ideas.

"You're right; it doesn't matter," he said, because ultimately the two women's relationship had no bearing on the case. "What matters is, how are you going to find her?"

"With this ring." She held out her hand, showing the plain silver band. "Lillet gave it to me...so that I could call her if I was in trouble." She rubbed her finger along the band, a pensive look on her face. A moment later, a fairy appeared in midair, a two-foot-tall blonde woman in miniature, with rapidly flitting dragonfly wings iridescent in the light, wearing a green shift.

"I'm here," she chirped, then did a double-take as she looked at Amoretta. "Hey, you're not my summoner."

"No, I'm not, but you are bound by your contract to obey the one who calls you through the ring."

"I know. What do you want?"

"I want you to take me to your summoner-but be careful. The place may be warded, and there will almost certainly be devils there, so don't allow yourself to be seen."

"Okay, fine. Thanks for the warning!"

"Shouldn't we call for more men?" Ballatore asked.

"This is a sorcerer we're going after, one who is in contact with a greater devil," Riesling said grimly. "A troop of constables would just be a fresh round of sacrifices."


	13. Chapter Twelve

Malphas.

The name was familiar to Lillet, and the fear it kindled felt a cold knife through her belly. She'd seen it during her reading of the Lemegeton, during the few days she'd held Solomon's legendary grimoire. She'd encountered it in other research as well, even on the previous day at the Royal House of Magic. Malphas, Duke of Hell. Amoretta had been right when she compared the scent of the murder-sacrifice to Advocat's, for Malphas was reputedly among the highest ranks of devils, outmatched only by the very princes of the underworld such as Asmodeus, Grimlet, and Mephistopheles.

This was the devil Calvert had summoned up, no doubt with flawed, patchwork ritual.

The knowledge could have been useful, Lillet supposed, were she not bound, gagged, and at the lunatic's mercy.

"Perhaps you understand," Calvert went on. "She's yours now, after all, so you surely appreciate her charms, and you are a magician..." He paced back and forth. "You must feel it, then, the craving to see beyond the veil, to experience for myself all the hidden wonders of the invisible world around us? I found the _Key to Avernus_ in a second-hand shop; I performed the rites and made the sacrifices...and Malphas came to me, _spoke_ to me in my mind!"

The explanation made sense; the ritual probably hadn't been able to summon Malphas in person-especially since Calvert was not an experienced magician and was working alone. His mind and will had been opened to the devil's, though. It had no doubt led him into worse and worse acts, subverting Calvert's already vulnerable soul in small ways, until at last he'd seen Amoretta.

"When I first saw her, I couldn't believe my eyes-no, more than just her beauty, her incredible voice. I could all but _taste_ her, _feel_ her like Art sprung to life!"

It was the angel within Amoretta, Lillet knew, one of the heavenly host given a flesh-and-blood body with all the weaknesses of such. To a devil, she was like a succulent joint of beef waved beneath the nose of a starving man, water to one parched in the desert.

Lillet could all but write the rest of the story herself.

"I had to have her, to make her mine, and Malphas showed me the way! And now, now that you are in my power, it will be complete!"

It would, too, Lillet thought, though not how Calvert expected it. Amoretta called both to the lusts of the madman and the devil, and in this way allowed the merging of wills. No doubt Malphas had devised the murders to exploit this, to merge the minds of man and devil, the symbolism of their shared desires matching the reality of their shared will, allowing more and more of the devil's mind, the devil's power into the world.

No doubt when the cycle was finished, Malphas would possess Calvert completely and be utterly free in the world, unbound by force or by contract.

A few murders would be nothing compared to the evil it would do. No doubt its first act would be to take Amoretta for itself, and so keep the literal terms of its promise to Calvert-after all, Calvert's _body_ would...

_No. Don't think about that. Think about how to stop it._

But how could she? Her magic was completely denied her, and as she couldn't even talk there was no chance of using deception. Wits were useless without the capacity for action.

Lillet had no idea at all how she could win that capacity.

-X X X-

"That's it, over there." The fairy pointed to a crumbling three-story building, one of several once fine-looking homes now reduced to sagging tenements and rooming houses.

"You're sure he's in there?" Ballatore asked.

The fairy put her hands on her hips and stamped one foot on empty air.

"I don't know about any 'him.' Miss Lillet is in there, in the attic." She then shuddered, a look of fear crossing her face. "The place all but reeks of devils. I couldn't get inside."

"It's all right," Amoretta said. "You found her for us."

"Okay, if you're happy."

There was a little poof of smoke, and the fairy vanished back to its own world.

"She's not going to help fight?" Riesling asked.

"She was only bound as a messenger," Amoretta said. "She's already done more than her bargain required, and freely, because Lillet is a good mistress to work for."

Ballatore glanced down and half-drew his sword from its sheath. Faint green lights glittered along the exposed blade. During the cab ride from Argentine Way to the Old Quarter, the fairy had charmed the weapon to enhance its effectiveness against the kind of enemies they would likely face. The effect was by no means permanent, or so Riesling had said, but it felt good, if he was going to be going up against devils, to be wielding "elf-shot" instead of ordinary steel. _"More than her bargain required," indeed._

"All right, then." He took a sealed envelope from his pocket, then scribbled the address on the back in pencil. He handed it up to the cab driver. "Take that to Royal Magician Riesling at the Palace." They were going in fast, to try to save Lillet, to forestall what might come next, and to take advantage of any possible element of surprise. If they failed, though, then Amoretta and Riesling's report would insure that the Royal House of Magic would come down on this Gaylord Calvert in full force.

The driver swallowed nervously-running errands for the Watch and dealing with magicians often unnerved people on their own, let alone together-but nodded and whipped up his horse. The cab clattered off, away from the street where Calvert's building waited.

"There won't be separate stairs. We'll have to go in through the front door," Ballatore murmured, considering their strategy. "Janice, we're going to need whatever you can give us."

Riesling nodded.

"It's a good thing that necromancy is especially effective against the power of sorcery, since that's what I'm best at." Again she drew the ghostly Hades Gate as she had at the murder scene two nights ago and at the Merlot shack earlier that day. This time, though, she did something different, making the pale light gleam more brightly, before she began the act of summoning. The wait made Ballatore twitch nervously. Could Calvert sense magic being performed nearby? Or might he simply look out a window and see the ghost-light glowing? He looked over at Amoretta; she did not fidget or pace, but her expression was pensive and she bit nervously at her lip.

At last the translucent form of an armored knight stepped forth from the circle. In its gauntleted fists was a massive flamberge, a wavy-bladed sword. It was an ironically appropriate weapon, as the blade was crafted to resemble a flame but the phantom's sword actually burned with a halo of orange fire. A second ghost knight joined the first a minute later, and then a third. Riesling sagged to her knees, her face slick with sweat.

"That's all I can manage," she gasped. "I'll try to find a source of mana so I can replace them if any are defeated, but don't count on it."

"It's all right," Ballatore told her. "They'll be a lot more use than I will." He glanced at Amoretta. "Are you ready?"

She shook her head.

"Not quite. I wanted...I wanted to wait until last to do this, because it might alert the devils." He caught the hesitation, as if she was about to do something that she wasn't entirely sure about.

The homunculus unhooked the sheathed sword from her belt, then dropped to one knee, holding the scarlet weapon in front of her, hilt upright. She bowed her head, closed her eyes, and recited softly:

_"I beseech Thee, O Lord, to let Thy light shine forth o'er the land, that I may do Thy will, and sweep away that which be unclean in Thy sight."_

A shudder passed through her, and she arched her back as if in pain, held taut and trembling in that frozen moment, and then, slowly, she stood upright, closed her hand around the hilt of her sword, and drew it from its sheath, sliding its emerging edge over the palm of her other hand. The blood from the cut hand...no, not blood, but something else, something amber-gold, flowed down over the blade and as it did caught fire, shining with a golden purity that hurt Ballatore's eyes, blazing far brighter and cleaner than the flaming swords of the phantoms.

"My God," Ballatore whispered, only faintly aware of the irony.

Amoretta's face was a mask of determination, but the words she spoke were soft, even gentle.

"Be safe for me, Lillet."

-X X X-

Calvert's head seemed to snap around as if seized by an external force, and his eyes blazed up an unholy crimson.

"Here!" the devil's deeper, huskier voice hissed.

"No! How-?"

" _This_ is why we should have killed her! You have brought trouble to our doorstep."

Calvert reached out for the knife, then his hand jerked back.

"Fool! It's too late for that now! We have more important things to do." The blazing eyes stared right into Lillet's. "Later, we will settle things with _this_ one."

Lillet shivered, her reaction causing a momentary smile on the devil's lips. It then turned away, made a little gesture, and the magic circle in the center of the room was overlain by the bloody light of a Rune. With the devil so close to manifesting, Calvert no longer needed cumbersome rituals to perform his summonings and could instead call on hellish minions directly. Chattering, keening as their belled caps rang, the first imps began to crawl forth.

-X X X-

The door had been warded, according to Amoretta; anything that crossed the threshold would have received a nasty surprise. The sweep of the flaming sword that carved open the door physically, though, also apparently dissolved the magical barrier. At least, Ballatore noted, the homunculus, the phantoms, and he himself entered the building without trouble.

Dust was everywhere. The foyer was clear enough and parts of the front hall, but the corners of the hall and the doors to side rooms were choked with it. To Ballatore's police-trained mind, this indicated at once that those parts of the building had been left unused for some time-though, he noted as he observed the movements of the ghost knights, there were things that left no tracks. Still, he had a feeling that Calvert's landlord hadn't long survived the artist's first experiments in sorcery.

There were no lights, indeed no candles anywhere, and without a lamp the only illumination came from the intruders themselves: the ghostly radiance of the phantoms' bodies and the flames of their and Amoretta's swords.

The Inspector was expecting the attack from the moment they'd entered and it came as they mounted the creaking staircase. Chittering black forms flung themselves over the landing above, falling among the intruders. One actually landed on Ballatore's back, at once raking at his shoulder with its claws before a phantom's sword swept the imp away.

The imps were not strong fighters, but they came on like a tide; for every one that dissolved into stinking smoke at a fatal wound two more seemed to appear. Amoretta let the phantoms take the lead; the imps' claws seemed to pass right through Riesling's familiars without harming them. This gave the invaders the edge they needed to force their way to the upper landing. They had just fought their way into the upper hall when two side doors were flung open and three massive forms surged out into the fray.

Ballatore nearly froze in terror. The imps had been bad enough, but these things were demons as the popular imagination had them: seven feet tall, massively built, with horns and wings and cloven hooves. The first devil clawed out at a passing phantom and when its talons pierced the ghost's body they seemed to slow as if meeting resistance and trailed little shreds of blue light when they emerged.

The third demon charged right for Ballatore, and he was slow, far too slow in reacting from the shock of their appearance. A man needed time to accustom his mind to facing devils in real life, and Ballatore didn't have time.

Suddenly, Amoretta was there, stepping between himself and the demon with sword upraised. The monster flinched, actually _flinched_ away from the golden flame and in the next minute she'd sliced it in two.

"Thank you," he said, but she was already turning to help the phantoms-now down to two. After a moment, he too raised his saber and returned to the fight. Another half-dozen imps or so were swarming down the stairs, followed by another hulking demon and...a cat?

But of course it wasn't a cat. Cats didn't walk on their hind legs. Cats didn't have paws with elongated fingers and opposable thumbs in which they carried gnarled wooden staves. Cats didn't point those staves at an attacking phantom, launch a bolt of magic, and snuff the ghost knight out like a spent candle before chortling cruelly. A tide of imps swarmed Amoretta, clawing at her and giggling insanely. She beat them back but not before they'd scored several cuts along her legs, drawing blood and slitting boot-leather.

The devil-cat pointed its staff again and Ballatore acted, not wanting to see if it could do to the homunculus what it had to the phantom. He hurled his saber; it flew clumsily over the wave of imps and slammed edge-on into the witch-cat and, probably due more to the fairy charm than the force of the throw, sent it shuddering into a cloud of foul, brimstone-scented smoke.

-X X X-

Calvert growled deep in his throat. His expression of rage told Lillet that things were not going as well for him as he'd expected. He waved his hand again, and from one of the runes before him tottered a large egg.

_Dragon!?_

The egg began to hop and twitch, shaking as it started to swell. A monster like that in these enclosed quarters would be a disaster. Its sheer bulk would crush floors and walls, and its fiery breath, in the middle of all this aged, dry timber, would start a blaze that could end up burning down half the city, to say nothing of Lillet and her rescuers.

Calvert the man might have cared about such things, but Malphas the devil definitely did not. Indeed, it might even consider the wake of a disaster fertile breeding ground for despair and greed, recruiting ground for souls.

In the next instant, though, the door to the atelier crashed open and Amoretta entered the room, spitting a massive demon on her sword. The blade shone with a pure golden flame so bright it stung Lillet's eyes, and her lover's face was a mask of resolute determination. In another instant Amoretta had crossed the room, raised the burning blade, and smashed it down on the twitching egg, blasting it to fragments. Quick strokes shattered the crimson Runes Malphas was using to gate in demons.

Calvert twitched and shirked from the flaming sword, his expression swirling between baffled rage and stark terror, the scarlet glow flickering in and out in his eyes. Then he spun, took two quick strides, and hurled himself through the nearest window in a shower of glass. Inspector Ballatore, whom Lillet hadn't even noticed until then, sprang across the room after him, bracing his hands against the sill as if he intended to follow despite the drop. Riesling dashed, puffing, through the door and grabbed his arm, just in case he truly intended to leap.

Amoretta, though, only had eyes for the prisoner. She dashed to Lillet's side and with deft strokes cut away the bindings, then pulled down the gag.

"Lillet! Please tell me you're all right!"

"Oh, Amoretta!" Unable to speak for a moment, Lillet flung her arms around the other woman and squeezed her close in a crushing embrace. They rose to their feet, still clinging together; with her free hand Amoretta gently stroked Lillet's hair.

"I'm just so glad you're safe. I was so worried that madman might have hurt you."

"No, I have a nasty bump on the head from when he captured me and a little chafing from the ropes, but you saved me from anything worse."

Amoretta stepped back from the embrace and took Lillet's hand, holding it up so she could see the wrist marked by red welts.

"Oh, poor Lillet," she said, and softly kissed the injury. "Promise me you'll have Gaff heal you as soon as we get home."

"I promise, but only if _you_ have him look at those cuts!" Her legs were marked by a number of superficial wounds and her left shoulder by a slightly more serious slice that bled sluggishly. "But Amoretta, I had no idea you could fight like that. You looked like St. Michael, slashing through those devils with that flaming sword." She glanced down at the blade, which still flared with gold light along its length. Amoretta blushed shyly, let the fire die out, and sheathed the sword. "Is that what you were?" Lillet asked. "A warrior angel, one of the guardians of heaven?"

Amoretta shook her head.

"I don't remember anything about my past existence, Lillet; you know that. And...I don't want to, either." She squeezed Lillet's hand. "I'm too happy just being with you to want to ever give that up."

"Oh, Amoretta." Lillet felt her eyes flood with tears and hugged her lover close once more.

Ballatore cleared his throat noisily. Suddenly remembering their circumstances, Lillet and Amoretta sprang apart and turned. Ballatore and Riesling both looked sheepish, the depth of the two lovers' emotion clearly making them feel like eavesdroppers.

"I'm glad you're safe, Mage Consul," Ballatore said, "but we still have to get after this bastard. We can't let a mad sorcerer run loose in the streets."

"I think we might be able to do something about that."

"You know where he's going?"

"No; right now I'm not sure even he knows where he's going, but I think we might be able to make him come to us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The devil's name, Malphas, comes from a seventeenth-century grimoire, the Lesser Key of Solomon, also commonly called...the Lemegeton. This book gives, among other things, purported instructions for the conjuring of 72 major devils and gives their names, titles, attributes, and so on. Malphas is one of those devils, although I've taken liberties with his title-he's identified as a Prince in the Lemegeton and I've downgraded him to ducal rank. Hey, Grimlet isn't in the real Lemegeton, so it's clear there are some differences between the game world and the real world...other than the obvious fact that magic works there and not here. As further trivia, the Lesser Key of Solomon is a minigame in Shadow Hearts: Covenant (the crests equippable to use magic come from the names of the 72 demons, and putting them all in the correct places on the map unlocks greater powers and an optional boss), while Malphas appears in various Castlevania games, sometimes as a boss and sometimes as a common enemy (his visual attributes therein, incidentally, do reflect the Lesser Key of Solomon, so in this case it seems someone actually Did Do The Research).
> 
> In the scene where Riesling is summoning phantoms, it's easy to get a measure of her ability to summon familiars in game terms-she's got a limit of 7 points of possible familiars that she can control at once (which equals three phantoms at 2 each, plus a leftover point so she can summon a ghost to try and hunt down some mana. Amoretta is of course attempting to let out a little of the essence of her own core through the shedding of her blood; essentially the same thing as she does in the game when she commits suicide to destroy Grimlet in Loops III and IV, but under hopefully controlled circumstances. I sense a "How could you do something so dangerous for my sake!?" lecture from Lillet when they get home...always presuming that they do get home...


	14. Chapter Thirteen

A plan beginning to take shape in her mind, Lillet crossed over to the workbench where Calvert had left his grimoire. The disgusting binding made her skin creep as she opened the book.

"What's that you have there?" Riesling asked, coming up next to her.

"It's Calvert's grimoire. He called it the _Key to Avernus_."

"I've never heard of that one."

"Well, it's not a regular grimoire like we use. It's not Rune magic, but full of old-style ritual."

Riesling glanced around the atelier, taking in the implements, the stubs of black and red candles, and the summoning circle drawn out on the floor.

"So he wasn't performing experiments in sorcery; this was just the only kind of magic he knew."

"Right," Lillet agreed. "Nothing but the worst kind of rituals, designed to call up devils with arcane and complex steps that even if done right don't necessarily work like they should. And judging by this, whomever wrote this book wasn't a normal magician anyway, but some kind of crazed devil-worshipper, which is about what you'd expect from a book bound in human skin. Some of these spells don't even seem to keep control over the summoned devils, but just call them up so the magician can bargain with them, even the weak ones." Lillet and turned and met the older woman's eyes. "I don't like the idea of destroying knowledge, but this book is dangerous. I think once we're done stopping Calvert, we should burn it."

"Is that your opinion or the opinion of your office?"

"Did you help rescue me just to pick a fight, Ms. Riesling?"

Riesling had the good grace to look sheepish.

"I...didn't mean it that way, Mage Consul. I just wanted to know the answer."

Lillet sighed. It seemed almost hypocritical to say that a book was too dangerous to keep when she herself was paging through it, looking for needed information. She reminded herself that the only reason she was doing that was to clean up the damage someone else had done by using the book in the first place.

_And Riesling is right about one thing. I'm the Mage Consul now, so that it makes it my responsibility to decide. Do I want to give other people authority that's supposed to be mine and then regret it if they make choices that turn out badly?_

"It's the opinion of the Mage Consul," she said firmly. "When this is over, we'll destroy it ourselves, officially." Sealing things away was never a permanent solution. Sooner or later, they always came unsealed. Lillet's experiences at the Silver Star Tower had been a textbook example, almost a worst-case scenario, of that truism.

"Ha!" she suddenly exclaimed as she continued to read. "This is it!" She left the book open and fetched some paper and the only writing instrument she could find, a stick of sketching charcoal.

"What is?" Riesling asked.

"The ritual that Calvert used to contact Malphas."

"What do you want that for?"

"Well," Lillet said with a smile that was positively evil, "you wanted Calvert back here, didn't you? And Malphas's mind is using his body right now, so I thought I'd summon him up."

Riesling all but exploded.

"You're going to summon Malphas? Here? Now? Have you gone mad?"

Lillet began to sketch out the pattern of the summoning circle from the book on a sheet of paper.

"I don't think so."

Ballatore snorted.

"It sounds like you've been hit on the head too hard to me."

"This ritual calls for blood sacrifice," Riesling all but shouted, looking at the page. "Do you think we'll _allow_ that?"

"Don't be silly, Ms. Riesling. I'm not going to perform the ritual." She finished the sketch, then began to add further details of her own. "Among other things, the ritual doesn't serve to summon the physical devil, but just acts to contact its mind. That's how Calvert got into this mess in the first place. But what the ritual does provide is the specific symbolism that relates to Malphas individually. Working from that, I can create a Rune that will let me summon him. His spirit is present within Calvert's body but not fully freed in our world yet, so he's still subject to being conjured."

She continued to look through the ritual, her knowledge of sorcery enabling her to separate out what matters pertained to Malphas with the peripheral elements of the spell, but Riesling kept at her, refusing to be dissuaded.

"Mage Consul Blan, you can't seriously be expecting to...to just _make up_ a rune to summon a duke of Hell."

"Why not? We know it can be done. King Solomon already did it. If I still had the Lemegeton, I would just use his Rune, but the principle still applies. And the ritual gives me the important knowledge that I couldn't make up on the fly. The hardest part is to key the summoning to a particular entity, and the more powerful the entity the more complex the identification. It'd be nearly impossible to do from scratch, but it shouldn't take more than a half an hour's work this way, if I get a chance to work uninterrupted."

Riesling was too busy staring, wide-eyed, to take the hint.

"If you... _still_ had the Lemegeton?"

Lillet sighed.

"I had to give it back to Mr. Advocat after I destroyed the Philosopher's Stone. That was the deal I made with him so he wouldn't interfere at the end." She supposed that from Riesling's point of view she was babbling incoherently; it wasn't as if the Watch magician knew the events of Lillet's past.

"You had King Solomon's grimoire?"

"Ms. Riesling," Amoretta said, "everyone knows that Lillet defeated the Archmage Calvaros when she was at the Silver Star Tower."

"Yes, but..."

Riesling took a step back and dropped into one of Calvert's hard wooden chairs, a stunned expression on her face.

"So this is really going to work?" put in the Inspector.

"If Lillet says it will, then it will."

"All right, then, why don't we just keep our traps shut and let her work."

It wasn't as easy as she'd made it sound. The ritual went on for several dozen pages of faded text on crumbling, worm-eaten pages. While Lillet was a master sorceress, her experience was largely with Rune magic, not the outdated and dangerous process of ritual sorcery. Sometimes she had difficulty in figuring out how to incorporate one part or another into her Rune, and at other times she found that the ritual was dangerously incomplete, particularly in the case of any binding aspects. She had to carefully extract the details of the spell that identified Malphas, then convert them to their proper symbolism in a Rune and combine them with elements to summon and control the devil. At the end, though, she was able to create a summoning Rune that she believed would work.

"That should do it," she said with satisfaction, putting down the charcoal stick. "Everyone, get behind me, over by the door. If something goes wrong, I want you to have a chance to get safely away-I mean it, Amoretta!" she snapped as her lover began to open her mouth in protest. "You took your risk already when you crashed in here to save me. This one is my turn."

"All right," Amoretta consented reluctantly. "I'm sure you'll succeed, though."

That _was what she'd been going to say?_ Lillet felt badly for misjudging her.

"I think so, too, or else I wouldn't try this, but...it's just better to be aware there could be trouble. Now, this is going to be a strong and difficult Rune, and it should take about fifteen minutes to set up, so don't interrupt me."

"Fifteen minutes?" Ballatore asked. "Don't Runes usually take about a minute or less?"

"Those are normal Runes at their most basic level," Riesling answered him. "What she's doing...it's like taking a standard Rune and infusing it with mana all the way to it's most powerful form-except that each step on the way is harder than even, say, a Chaos Nest or Titania."

The Inspector shook his head.

"So you understand this, Janice?"

Riesling laughed hollowly.

"Understand? The theory, maybe. Just _creating_ the Rune is so far out of my league...Maybe my father could do this with a research library, a day to use it, and a team of assistants. _Maybe_."

Lillet suppressed a sigh. The praise was a nice change, considering the source, but it was distracting for them to be chattering away behind her, and her head still ached. She probably had a mild concussion from when Calvert had knocked her out; hopefully elven healing could deal with that but it didn't help her now.

 _Quit whining, Lillet, and do this!_ she told herself sharply. Using her wand, she sketched out the Rune on the floor as she'd drawn it on the paper, each stroke leaving trails of the dull crimson light that was the hallmark of sorcerous Runes. She poured mana into it, the magical energy she'd stored within herself, but there was more to it then simply drawing a pattern and fueling it. A Rune was an act of will, the mind and spirit of the magician forcing the energies of the universe to obey. The mana and the pattern drawn were the key in the lock but Lillet had to turn it herself to activate the Rune.

She'd done the same kind of thing before, though, and she didn't fail now. Her design had not been flawed; a bell seemed to ring in her mind and the Rune blazed into existence, the entire shape glowing furiously on the floor before her, active and ready to use. Lillet took a deep breath, gathering herself, and invoked the power of summoning the Rune represented, calling on the spirit of the devil Malphas. The lines of the Rune blazed with hellfire-

-a reeking wind roared through the atelier, causing loose papers to swirl in the air, buffeting Lillet and the others-

-and Malphas was there.

Whereas before Lillet had seen only a twisted reflection, hints of the devil's presence, her summoning had pulled it forth in full possession of Calvert's body, the demented artist recognizable only by the clothes he wore and the topaz stickpin in his cravat, the stone shining with a leprous radiance in the reflected light from the Rune. The form was completely inhuman, with hands and feet like the talons of a great raptor, the head not unlike a giant crow, its beak a malevolent red, lined with saw-toothed projections, and with three balefully shining eyes. Massive sable wings sprouted from its back, each pinion glinting along their edges as if somehow honed to the keenness of a blade.

"At last!" it laughed, its voice booming and yet high-pitched like a keening scream over the wind. "At last I am freed from this cur's shreds of will!" Lillet had expected this, that invoking the devil would also grant it full ascendancy over Calvert in the body it possessed, but hearing it, seeing it, still gave her a twinge of sorrow. Whatever crimes the man had committed, the devil's evil was much, much worse. "In return for your kindness, I shall make your death swift and painless, Lillet Blan."

Of course Malphas had been within Calvert the entire time, so it certainly knew Lillet, but hearing her name come from its maw was still disconcerting. She couldn't let anything distract her, though.

"Free?" Lillet challenged. "You aren't free, Malphas. I summoned you. I am your master."

Malphas roared with laughter.

"Master? A puny human magician thinks to master _me_? I am not some petty demon to be ordered about at your whim. I am a duke of Hell's legions! No mortal commands me!"

Lillet had been in this position before. At the Silver Star Tower she'd tried to order the devil prince Grimlet back to Hell, but her commands had been so much dust in the wind to him. Even the Archmage Calvaros had only been able to master Grimlet with the use of the Philosopher's Stone, the ultimate expression of magical power. Lillet had beaten Grimlet, but by trickery, not by force.

"But you are no Grimlet," she declared, answering not its words but her own doubts. Lillet hurled her will at it, invoking the power of her Rune, the binding it placed on the summoned devil to serve the summoning magician. A trickle of fear played at the back of her mind, thoughts of what would happen if she failed and lost control. Amoretta's life, her own, the two Watch officers, the people of the capital.

But mostly Amoretta.

_So don't let it happen!_

"And. You. Are. Mine!"

The Rune blazed anew. Malphas screamed in rage and defiance, then dropped to one knee within the circle.

"Now leave that man's body and return to Hell," she ordered immediately, not giving it a chance to say or do anything more, even as she felt the force of its mind clawing at her control. All at once, in a very anticlimactic puff of smoke, it was done. The drumbeat of Malphas's will against her own, fighting for supremacy, was gone, and all that remained was Gaylord Calvert. His eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped to the atelier floor in a dead faint, his mind and body unable to stand the strain of what had happened.

"It's all right," Lillet said, sighing heavily. "You can take him now, Inspector."

Ballatore was hesitant, then regained himself and stepped forward. With deft, experienced motions he manacled the unconscious man's hands behind his back to keep him out of further trouble.

"How dangerous is he-without the devil I mean?" he asked.

"Not very," Lillet said, "at least magically. It was Malphas that could call up imps and other minions, not Calvert, and so long as he doesn't have magical paraphernalia or his grimoire Calvert won't be able to do anything else. It wouldn't hurt to treat him as a magician, though, and if he ends up in an asylum instead of on the gallows he should definitely have his powers, such as they are, sealed just in case." She wobbled a bit as a wave of exhaustion hit her, and Amoretta was immediately by her side, taking her arm and supporting her weight. _Serves me right, I guess, for doing major magic with an aching head._

Riesling was staring at Lillet open-mouthed; she looked like she'd been frozen that way since Malphas's summoning and banishment.

"That...that was impossible!" she babbled. Lillet would have ignored her, but she was hurt, tired, and too short on energy to be patient any longer.

"No, Ms. Riesling, that is why Her Majesty made me Mage Consul regardless of whom I choose to love." She had the petty satisfaction of seeing the older woman flinch.

As Amoretta helped her towards the door, Lillet took one last look around the atelier. It was a mistake; her eyes fell upon the unconscious artist, his hands chained, a pathetic picture. Had the taint been in him from the beginning, the madness leading him to the unholy? Or was he just another victim, a dabbler in the arcane who'd opened the wrong book and found himself being corrupted from within? What was his degree of guilt? Malphas's partner, or merely prey?

Ultimately, she supposed it didn't matter. Lillet didn't want to pass judgment or lay blame. The killer had been stopped, people were safe, and Amoretta freed from the burden of Calvert-Malphas's sick obsession with her. That was what mattered. It was over.

"Yes, it is," Amoretta said, and Lillet realized she must have said the last part out loud. Amoretta smiled at her with that look full of innocent, sweet joy that Lillet loved to see. "I'm so happy."

"Because the killer was stopped?"

"Yes, but more than that. Usually, you're the one who rescues me from danger. This time, we rescued each other," she said, and the light of her happiness was as bright as the rising sun outside.


	15. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had considered "The Hollow Heart" done after Chapter 13; that was the way I had outlined it from the very beginning. My readers, however, didn't seem to agree. One reader asking for an epilogue might just be a single opinion. Two readers starts to seem like a pattern, though. And three readers looking for more starts to make it seem as if I've gone and left threads dangling, points not explained, a story genuinely incomplete. And when one of those three readers happens to be my wife, well, it becomes time for me to pick up the old pencil and paper and get back to work. So this chapter is dedicated to E-ANiL, Sunder the Gold (Lillet and the fate of the book are for you!), and especially Tarma Hartley.

**Theater District Killer Caught**  
**Mage Consul Aids Watch in Capturing Sorcerer**  
( _The Gazette_ )

"There's a buyer for those four crates of dreambane root," Charles Danae told his assistant. "Fetch me the manifest so I can verify the specifications, will you?"

"It's illegal to import dreambane in its raw state into the kingdom, Danae."

The importer jerked his head up, then relaxed as he saw who it was.

"Inspector Ballatore. I didn't hear you come in."

"The Watch doesn't always go around kicking down doors and waving swords, regardless of what you read in the _Star_."

"I understand that congratulations are in order."

"I could say the same. After all, we ended up making a dozen arrests while working through your list. Your competition in the area of, shall we say, dubious transactions has become substantially thinner."

"Dubious? You wound me, Inspector, you truly do. Take the shipment of dreambane root you mentioned. It is currently stored on a ship anchored-not docked, mind-upriver. I am merely brokering a deal from one foreign merchant to another, and it will be taken on to Albion without ever touching our shores." He smiled broadly. "What could be fairer than that?"

"Dreambane root is illegal in Albion, too."

"It seems to me that would be the concern of the buyer, not either of us."

"Maybe so. Right now, I think we need to be concerned with this."

He tossed a crumpled piece of paper onto the desk.

"Like to take a guess where I found that?"

Danae picked up the paper and unfolded it. He had a fairly good idea of what it was, but he managed to keep his thoughts from showing. He hadn't survived this long without emotional control, after all.

It was what he thought.

"In the pocket of the man we arrested last night. It appears to be a warning note, telling the recipient that the Mage Consul and the Watch were looking for him. A warning to the sorcerer and torture killer preying on this city. Does the handwriting look familiar?"

"I'm afraid not. Do you believe it belongs to one of my competitors?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"Then...?"

Ballatore plucked one of the records off Danae's desk and held it in front of the importer's face.

"Kind of like the writing there, isn't it?"

"Are you implying that _I_ -?"

Ballatore dropped the manifest; his hand snapped out and down, fisting in the front of Danae's tunic.

"Yes, Danae, I am. Now, which of the various offenses would you care to confess to first? Trading in contraband goods? Accessory to murder? I think we could even make a case for treason, since your little warning resulted in an assault on a Court minister."

"Inspector! This is preposterous! I...I _helped_ you when you came to me."

Ballatore hauled the importer up out of his chair.

"Now listen to me, you little worm. Less than twenty-four hours ago I was standing in the same room as a greater devil, a duke of Hell. You probably don't have the slightest idea what that feels like, or what it was that you were helping Calvert to do. That's the difference between us, because I _do_ know, and that means that I have no patience at all for a squirming, squealing piece of filth like yourself who thinks that it makes your hands any cleaner because you didn't ask what Calvert was going to do with the items, or the information, or whatever the hell it was that you provided. Believe you me, Danae, the only way I'm not going to see you hang is if you force me to kill you right here and now."

Staring into the Inspector's eyes from no more than six inches away, Danae found that he believed him implicitly.

**Murderous Sorcerer Beaten!**  
**Watch and Magicians Combine to Exorcize Devil!**  
 **Duel of Sorcery in Artist's Studio!**  
( _The Flying Mercury_ )

Royal Magician Manfred Riesling was plump and rubicund, quite unlike his daughter, though she did take after him in coloring. As with most evenings, he was found in the lounge of the Royal House of Magic; Janice found him sitting alone with a glass of port on the table by his elbow.

"Ah, Janice, dear," he said, smiling at the sight of her. "I understand that congratulations are in order."

"Pardon me?"

"The Calvert case. I admit that your name may not have been mentioned in the broadsheets, but I do try to keep aware of what my daughter is involved in."

"Yes, well," she said, making a sour face, "I had little enough to do with the solution."

"I wouldn't say that. After all, Mage Consul Blan even added a note of commendation for your assistance in rescuing her."

She flinched as if struck.

"She did _what_?"

"Apparently your magical assistance was key in helping Miss Virgine and Inspector Ballatore rescue her."

Janice sighed bitterly.

"My God, I swear she must do it on purpose."

"Eh?"

"May I?" She touched the back of a chair.

"Please do."

She joined her father at the table.

"Did she mention that I clashed with her at nearly every turn, at one point all but accused her of the crimes, and leapt to the conclusion that she had created Miss Virgine herself for..." Janice hesitated at that point; some things one never became comfortable discussing with a parent. "Immoral purposes," she settled on.

From the thunderstruck look on her father's face, she knew what the answer was.

"No, I guess she didn't. But who knows, next time I may step on the toes of someone who doesn't get their revenge by constantly taking the high road so I stew in my own shame."

"Janice, what were you thinking?"

She sighed.

"I don't even know any more. Did you know that she didn't create Amoretta?"

"No; I knew she wasn't a familiar in the ordinary sense, though."

"I wish I'd known that. That was the worst part, I think. I just..." She shook her head. "Free-willed or not, she treats that _thing_ like a person. And it, she, whatever, returns the attention. It's almost sickening how devoted they are."

"Ah," her father said. "I see. It bothers you that a homunculus can find love, when..."

"This isn't about-" Janice snapped reflexively. "Oh, whom am I kidding? Of _course_ it's about me, and Dierdre." Beautiful, charming, seductive Dierdre, who'd started out as a typical girls'-seminary crush and became the first real love of her life. Tempestuous, militantly unfaithful Dierdre, who'd stepped on Janice's heart yet was still the face that came to her on lonely nights.

Her father laid his hand over hers.

"There's someone out there for you, Janice. Never doubt that."

"And in the meantime, I'm jealous of a creation some alchemist grew in a lab."

**Watch Unable to Arrest Killer Alone.**  
**Forced to Ask Mage Consul Blan for Aid.**  
( _The Star_ )

"There, of course, we have the major problem with a free press," Lillet said, setting the last of the day's broadsheets aside. "Give people the legal right to express their opinion and they promptly insist on doing so."

Amoretta giggled and snuggled up closer. They'd been lying side-by-side in bed, reading, but now that she didn't have to make space for Lillet's arm or the open broadsheets the homunculus wasted no time in curling up full-length against her lover instead of just having their hips touching.

"At least they left my name out of it," Amoretta said.

"Well, since we left before anyone other than Ballatore or Riesling showed up, there was no one else to talk, and they respected your wishes. I still don't see why you didn't want your part mentioned. People ought to know that you're a heroine."

"That wasn't heroism; that was just love. It's only natural to do your best for the one you care about. You'd do the same in an instant-in fact, you already have, several times."

"You have such a unique way of looking at things." Lillet shrugged. "Ah, well, I just want everyone to know how wonderful you are, but if it would bother you instead of making you happy there's no point in doing it."

Amoretta leaned over and kissed Lillet on the cheek.

"Thank you."

"I'm just glad it won't take more than another day's work to extract anything of genuine value from the _Key to Avernus_ so we can destroy it. So much of it is positively nauseating; I'm afraid I'll have bad dreams."

"Do you have to do it all yourself?"

Lillet sighed.

" _Probably_ not. It's just that with something like that, the better one is at sorcery the less dangerous it is, because you have a better understanding of the risks and because you know easier and safer ways to accomplish the things it promises."

"I see. Since you're the best, you're in less danger than any of your staff that you might assign the job to."

"Plus I can get though it faster so as to put the thing on the fire that much sooner. At least the Rune I made to summon Malphas would take a master sorcerer to cast, and someone that skilled is less likely to do something stupid-and there's simply very few _of_ them. That grimoire, though, is full of things that an untrained, unbalanced person like Calvert could do to put both himself and others at risk."

Amoretta slipped an arm around Lillet just below her breasts.

"I'll be sure to hold you close, then, so you don't have any nightmares."

Lillet nuzzled affectionately against her lover's hair.

"Thank you. It's impossible to have bad thoughts while you're in my arms."

With that she turned, blew out the lamp, and spooned up next to her beloved, closing her own arm over Amoretta's and pressing her lover's hand to her heart. Before sleep claimed her, the thought came to her that she had one thing to be thankful for out of the horrors they'd come through: now, when she thought of the golden light of angelic fire, there was a happy memory to associate it with instead of only nightmares.

**City Theater Rebounds from Tragedy.  
La Virgine Shines in **_**Goldenlake**_ **.**  
( _The Gazette_ Theatrical Review)

"If I was sleeping with a master magician, would my voice be that good?" Maria Bacardi muttered under her breath. The critics-and the public-had spoken, and she was back to being the opera company's second soprano. Ah, well, there was always _Valentine and Gerard_ in two months, where the acting was as important as the voice. The Virgin would have to step aside for that one, at the least.

It was too bad, she thought, that Calvert hadn't managed to finish her portrait. Thanks to the twisted minds of collectors, the man's merely adequate work had started to ascend in price as soon as the news came out that he'd been an insane, murderous sorcerer. If he'd completed the piece, she could have banked a tidy sum towards her retirement.

She walked out on the empty stage, her footfalls echoing throughout the cavernous theater. La Bacardi wanted to shine here, sure enough, wanted to reclaim the lead and was willing to fight for it. But if she had to be in second place, then so it would be, something that Maestro Terne never seemed to understand about her.

But to a singer in this kingdom, the City Theater in the capital was the promised land, and unlike so many others Maria Bacardi knew that it was better to serve in Heaven than reign elsewhere.


End file.
